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SOUTHERN    SOLDIER   STORIES 


£&v& 


J.  E.  B.  Stuart  — The  Cavalier. 


Southern  Soldier  Stories 


By 

George  Cary  Eggleston 

Author  of  "A  Rebel's   Recollections,"   etc.,  etc. 


With  Illustrations  by  R.  F.  Zogbaum 


New  York 
The   Macmillan  Company- 
London:  Macmillan  &  Co.,  Ltd. 
1898 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1898, 
By  The  Macmillan  Company. 


Norivood  Press 

J.  S.  Cusbing  &  Co.— Berwick  fcf  Smith 

Norivood  Mass.    U.  S.  A. 


TO   "JOE" 

I   DEDICATE   THIS   BOOK  TO   THE    "  JOE "    SO   OFTEN 

MENTIONED   IN   THESE   STORIES 

HE   WAS    MY    LOVED  COMRADE    IN   ARMS,    AND   A 

SHARER   IN  ALL  MY  WAR   EXPERIENCES 

HE   IS    NOW 

m.  JasEpi)  am.  iEgglegton 

OF  RICHMOND,    VIRGINIA 


PREFACE 

The  use  of  the  first  personal  pronoun  singu- 
lar in  any  of  these  stories  does  not  of  necessity 
mean  that  the  author  had  anything  to  do  with 
the  events  chronicled. 

"  I  tell  the  story  as  'twas  told  to  me." 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

How  Battles  are  Fought i 

Joe  . 

7 

Around  the  Camp-fire 

ii 

An  Unfinished  Fight 

18 

A  Family  that  had  no  Luck 

22 

William    .... 

25 

A  Cradle  Captain 

29 

Who  is  Russell? 

31 

"  Juanita  "... 

48 

Scruggs    .... 

52 

Joe  on  Horseback     . 

55 

A  Rather  Bad  Night 

57 

The  Women  of  Petersburg 

70 

Ham  Seay 

74 

Old  Jones's  Dash 

76 

A  Woman's  Hair 

80 

A  Midnight  Crime    . 

85 

A  Little  Rebel 

90 

Twenty-one 

97 

A  Beef  Episode 

104 

Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy 

107 

A  Breach  of  Etiquette 

121 

x                             Contents 

PAGE 

The  Lady  of  the  Green  Blind 124 

Youngblood's  Last  Morning 

128 

Billy  Goodwin           .... 

133 

Manassas 

137 

My  Last  Night  on  Picket 

143 

Griffith's  Continued  Story 

147 

A  Cheerful  Supper  of  Cheers     . 

*55 

How  the  Tar  Heels  Stuck 

157 

"  Little  Lamkin's  Battery  " 

159 

Curry        ...... 

171 

Gun-boats 

i75 

Two  Minutes 

179 

Si  Tucker  —  Coward  and  Hero 

182 

War  as  a  Therapeutic  Agent     . 

188 

"  Notes  on  Cold  Harbor  " 

191 

A  Plantation  Heroine 

203 

Two  Incidents  in  Contrast 

206 

How  the  Sergeant-major  told  the  Truth 

210 

Two  Gentlemen  at  Petersburg 

215 

Old  Jones  and  the  Huckster 

220 

A  Dead  Man's  Message    . 

223 

A  Woman's  Last  Word    . 

225 

An  Incomplete  Story 

228 

Random  Facts          .... 

23T 

My  Friend  Phil        .... 

237 

ILLUSTRATIONS 


J.  E.  B.  Stuart  — The  Cavalier 

"  Get  up  here  and  do  your  duty  " 
A  Good-bye  to  a  Friend  .... 
She  was  singing  "  Dixie  "... 
The  last  that  was  seen  of  Bernard  Poland 
A  Dead  Man's  Message    . 


Frontispiece 

FACING    PAGE 
JO 


56 

91 
119 

224 


SOUTHERN  SOLDIER  STORIES 


»>*<<: 


HOW    BATTLES    ARE   FOUGHT 

A  PREFATORY  EXPLANATION  FOR    THE  BENEFIT 

OF   THOSE    WHO  KNOW  NOTHING 

ABOUT  THE  MATTER 

When  squads  or  scouting  parties  meet  each 
other,  they  either  fight  in  an  irregular  fashion 
or  they  run  away. 

With  a  systematic  battle  it  is  different. 

Before  a  systematic  battle,  one  army  selects 
some  place  at  which  to  resist  the  advance  of 
the  other. 

The  advancing  army  usually  cannot  leave  the 
other  aside  and  go  on  by  another  route  to  the 
capital  city  which  it  wants  to  reach,  because,  if 
it  did,  the  army  left  aside  would  quickly  destroy 
what  is  called  the  advancing  army's  "communi- 
cations." 

To  destroy  these  communications  would  be  to 
cut  off  supplies  of  food,  ammunition,  and  every- 
thing else  necessary  to  an  army. 

The  army  which  takes  the  defensive  selects 


2  How  Battles  are  Fought 

some  point  that  can  be  most  easily  defended, 
—  some  point  where  a  river  or  a  creek,  or  a  line 
of  hills,  or  something  else,  serves  to  give  it  the 
advantage  in  a  fight. 

The  enemy  must  either  attack  that  army 
there,  and  drive  it  out  of  its  position,  or  it  must 
"  flank  "  it  out,  if  it  is  itself  to  go  forward. 

To  "  flank "  an  army  out  of  position  is  not 
merely  to  pass  it  by,  which,  as  explained  above, 
might  be  dangerous,  but  to  seize  upon  some 
point  or  some  road,  the  possession  of  which  will 
compel  that  army  to  retire. 

Thus,  when  General  Lee  could  not  be  driven 
out  of  his  works  at  Fredericksburg  by  direct 
attack,  General  Hooker  marched  his  army  up 
the  river,  and  by  crossing  there  placed  himself 
nearer  Richmond  than  General  Lee  was.  This 
compelled  General  Lee  to  abandon  his  position 
at  Fredericksburg,  and  to  meet  General  Hooker 
in  the  open  field ;  otherwise  there  would  have 
been  nothing  to  prevent  General  Hooker  from 
going  to  Richmond,  with  a  part  of  his  greatly 
superior  force,  leaving  the  rest  of  it  to  check 
any  operations  Lee  might  have  undertaken 
against  his  communications. 

It  is  in  some  such  fashion  as  this  that  every 
battle  is  brought  about.  One  side  is  ever  trying 
to  get  somewhere,  and  the  other  side  is  ever 
trying  to  prevent  it  from  doing  so.  Inciden- 
tally, each  army  is  trying  to  destroy  the  other. 


How  Battles  are  Fought  3 

When  one  army  has  planted  itself  in  a  posi- 
tion of  its  choice,  and  the  other  advances  to 
attack  it,  this  is  what  happens  :  — 

The  army  that  is  standing  still  throws  out 
lines  of  pickets  in  front  to  watch  for  the  en- 
emy's advance  and  report  it. 

The  enemy,  as  he  advances,  also  throws  out  a 
cloud  of  skirmishers  to  "  feel "  of  the  position 
and  avoid  traps  and  ambushes. 

A  line  of  battle  often  extends  over  several 
miles  in  length,  covering  all  available  ground 
for  attack  or  defence. 

Before  the  advancing  general  can  determine 
against  what  part  of  his  adversary's  line  to  hurl 
his  heaviest  battalions,  he  must  study  the  condi- 
tions along  that  line ;  namely,  by  means  of  his 
skirmishers. 

In  the  same  way  the  general  who  is  awaiting 
attack  tries  to  discover  through  his  skirmishers 
what  his  enemy's  plan  of  battle  is,  and  at  what 
points  he  most  needs  to  concentrate  his  own 
men. 

While  awaiting  this  information  he  posts  his 
men  —  cavalry,  artillery,  and  infantry  —  wher- 
ever he  thinks  they  will  be  most  useful,  having 
reference  all  the  time  to  their  rapid  movement 
during  the  battle  from  one  part  of  the  line  to 
another,  as  occasion  may  demand. 

He  also  holds  a  considerable  part  of  his  army 
"in  reserve."     That  is  to  say,  he  stations  it  at 


4  How  Battles  are  Fought 

points  a  little  in  rear  of  the  line  of  battle,  from 
which  he  can  order  all  or  any  part  of  it  to  any 
point  where  strength  may  be  needed. 

In  a  great  battle,  involving  large  bodies  of 
troops,  each  corps  or  division  commander  must 
do  in  a  smaller  way  what  the  general-in-chief 
does  on  a  larger  scale.  Each  has  charge  of  the 
battle  on  a  certain  part  of  the  line.  Each 
must  take  care  of  things  within  his  own  juris- 
diction, and  be  ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to 
respond  to  the  demand  of  the  commanding  gen- 
eral for  troops  with  which  to  help  out  elsewhere. 

These  are  the  generalities.  Let  us  now  come 
to  the  battle  itself. 

When  the  skirmishers  of  the  advancing  army 
meet  the  skirmishers  of  the  resisting  army,  there 
is  apt  to  be  some  pretty  hot  fighting  for  a  time, 
and  sometimes  the  artillery  is  considerably  in- 
volved in  it.  But  this  is  not  the  real  thing ; 
it  is  a  mere  preliminary  to  the  actual  battle. 

The  army  that  is  standing  on  the  defensive 
holds  its  lines  in  position  —  every  battery  placed 
where  it  will  do  the  most  good,  and  every  in- 
fantryman lying  down  and  taking  the  utmost 
advantage  of  every  tree  stump,  log,  or  inequal- 
ity of  the  ground,  to  protect  himself  as  much  as 
possible. 

The  men  on  horseback  are  either  in  front  with 
the  skirmishers,  minutely  observing  the  strength 
and   movements  of  the  enemy,  or,  having  fin- 


How  Battles  arc  Fought  5 

ished  that  work,  are  thrown  out  at  the  two  ends 
of  the  lines,  called  "  flanks,"  to  watch  there  for 
possible  movements  of  the  enemy  that  might 
be  otherwise  unobserved.  They  are  within  call 
of  any  part  of  the  line  where  need  of  them 
may  arise. 

While  the  skirmishers  are  doing  their  work, 
the  heaviest  strain  of  war  falls  on  the  nerves  of 
the  men  in  line  of  battle. 

They  have  nothing  to  do  but  wait. 

They  wait  with  the  certain  knowledge  that  in 
a  few  minutes  the  advancing  army  will  throw 
men  forward,  and  thus  convert  its  skirmish  line 
into  a  line  of  attack;  while  on  their  own  side 
they  know  that  their  skirmish  line,  after  making 
all  of  discovery  that  temporary  resistance  can 
accomplish,  will  fall  back,  and  that  then  the 
crucial  conflict  will  begin. 

Then  comes  the  uproar  of  battle,  —  the  dust, 
the  blood,  the  advance,  the  retreat,  the  shock  of 
arms,  the  murderous  volleys  of  the  infantry, 
the  thunder  storm  of  artillery ;  in  short,  the 
final  desperate  conflict  of  determined  men  for 
the  mastery,  all  of  them  directed  by  cool-headed 
commanders,  sitting  on  their  horses  at  points  of 
vantage  for  observation,  and  directing  a  rein- 
forcement here,  a  withdrawal  of  men  there,  the 
hurrying  of  artillery  to  one  point,  an  onset  of 
cavalry  at  another,  and  at  a  critical  moment  an 
up-and-at-them  charge  with  the  bayonets.    That 


6  How  Battles  are  Fought 

usually  ends  matters  one  way  or  the  other  at 
the  point  involved.  For  only  two  or  three  times 
in  any  war  do  men  with  fixed  bayonets  on  one 
side  actually  meet  in  physical  shock  men  armed 
with  fixed  bayonets  on  the  other. 

Wherever  there  is  advantage  on  either  side, 
the  general  commanding  that  side  throws  troops 
forward  in  as  heavy  masses  as  possible  to  make 
the  most  of  it.  If  one  line  or  the  other  be 
broken,  every  conceivable  effort  is  made  to  con- 
vert the  breach  into  victory.  And  if  victory 
comes,  the  cavalry  thunder  forward  in  pursuit 
and  in  an  endeavor  to  convert  the  enemy's 
defeat  into  rout. 

This  is  only  a  general  description.  I  hope 
that  no  old  soldier  on  either  side  will  read  it.  It 
is  not  intended  for  such  as  they.  It  is  written 
virginibus  puerisque,  and  for  other  people  who 
don't  know  anything  about  the  subject.  It  is 
printed  here  in  the  hope  that  it  may  enable 
such  persons  a  little  better  to  understand  these 
stories  of  strenuous  conflict. 


JOE 

JOE  was  very  much  in  earnest  at  Pocotaligo, 
South  Carolina,  where  a  great  little  battle 
was  fought  on  the  226.  of  October,  1862. 

That  is  to  say,  Joe  was  not  quite  seventeen 
years  old,  was  an  enthusiastic  soldier,  and  was 
as  hot  headed  as  a  boy  well  can  be. 

We  had  two  batteries  and  a  few  companies 
of  mounted  riflemen  —  three  hundred  and  fifty- 
one  men  all  told  —  to  oppose  the  advance  of 
five  thousand.  We  had  only  the  nature  of  the 
country,  the  impassability  of  the  marshes,  and 
the  long  high  causeways  to  enable  us  to  make 
any  resistance  at  all. 

Before  the  battle  of  Pocotaligo  proper  began, 
we  went  two  miles  below  to  Yemassee  and  there 
made  a  stand  of  half  an  hour. 

Our  battery,  numbering  fifty-four  men,  re- 
ceived the  brunt  of  the  attack. 

Joe  had  command  of  a  gun. 

His  men  fell  like  weeds  before  a  scythe.  Pres- 
ently he  found  himself  with  only  three  men  left 
with  whom  to  work  a  gun. 

The  other  battery  was  that  of  Captain  Elliot 
of  South  Carolina ;  and  Captain  Elliot  had  just 
7 


8  Joe 

been  designated  Chief  of  Artillery.  Elliot's 
battery  was  really  not  in  action  at  all.  Joe  see- 
ing Captain  Elliot,  and  being  himself  full  of  the 
enthusiasm  which  insists  upon  getting  things 
done,  appealed  to  the  Chief  of  Artillery  for  the 
loan  of  some  cannoneers  with  whom  to  work 
his  gun  more  effectively.  Captain  Elliot  de- 
clined. Thereupon  Joe  broke  into  a  volley  of 
vituperation,  calling  the  captain  and  his  battery 
cowards,  and  by  other  pet  names  not  here  to 
be  reported. 

I,  being  Joe's  immediate  chief,  as  well  as  his 
elder  brother,  commanded  him  to  silence  and 
ordered  him  back  to  his  gun.  There  he  stood 
for  fifteen  minutes  astride  a  dead  man  and  pull- 
ing the  lanyard  himself.  At  the  end  of  that 
time  we  were  ordered  to  retire  to  Pocotaligo. 

Joe  was  flushed,  powder  grimed,  and  very 
angry ;  so  angry  that  even  I  came  in  for  a 
part  of  his  displeasure.  When  I  asked  him,  in 
order  that  I  might  make  report  for  the  section, 
how  many  shots  he  had  fired,  he  blazed  out  at 
me :  "  How  do  I  know  ?  I've  been  killing 
Yankees,  not  counting  shots." 

"  How  many  rounds  have  you  left  in  your 
limber-chest,  Joe  ?  "  I  asked. 

He  turned  up  the  lid  of  the  chest,  and  re- 
plied:  "Five." 

"And  the  chest  had  fifty,  hadn't  it,  when 
you  went  into  action  ?  " 


Joe  9 

"  Of  course." 

"  Then  you  fired  forty-five,  didn't  you  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  suppose  so,  I  don't  know  !  Confound 
these  technicalities,  anyhow  !  I'm  fighting,  not 
counting  !     Do  your  own  arithmetic  !  " 

It  wasn't  a  very  subordinate  speech  for  a 
sergeant  to  make  to  the  commander  of  his  sec- 
tion, but  Joe  was  my  brother,  and  I  loved  him. 

At  Pocotaligo  he  fought  his  gun  with  superb 
devotion  and  effect.  But  he  remained  mad  all 
over  and  clear  through  till  two  o'clock  that 
night.  At  that  hour  I  was  able  to  persuade 
him  that  he  had  been  indiscreet  in  his  remarks 
to  the  Chief  of  Artillery. 

"  Maybe  I  was,"  he  said,  grasping  my  hand ; 
"but  you're  not  to  worry,  old  fellow;  I'll  stand 
the  consequences,  and  you're  the  best  that  ever 
was." 

Nevertheless  I  did  worry,  knowing  that  such 
an  offence  was  punishable  without  limit  in  the 
discretion  of  a  court-martial.  It  was  scarcely 
sunrise  the  next  morning  when  I  appeared  at 
Captain  Elliot's  headquarters.  I  had  ridden 
for  half  an  hour,  I  suppose,  my  mind  all  the 
time  recalling  a  certain  military  execution  I  had 
seen ;  but  this  morning  I  imagined  Joe  in  the 
r61e  of  victim.  I  had  not  slept,  of  course,  and 
my  nerves  were  all  on  edge. 

I  entered  headquarters  with  a  degree  of  trepi- 
dation which  I  had  never  felt  before. 


io  Joe 

Captain  Elliot  was  performing  his  ablutions 
as  well  as  he  could,  with  a  big  gourd  for  basin. 
He  nodded  and  spoke  with  his  head  in  the 
towel. 

"  Good  fight,  wasn't  it  ?  We  have  a  lot  of 
those  fellows  to  bury  this  morning.  Pretty- 
good  bag  for  three  hundred  and  fifty-one  of  us, 
and  it  was  mainly  your  battery's  cannister  that 
did  it." 

I  changed  feet  and  said,  "  Y — e — s." 

I  thought  to  myself  that  that  was  about  the 
way  /  should  take  to  "  let  a  man  down  easy  "  in 
a  hard  case. 

The  captain  carefully  removed  the  soap  from 
his  ears,  then  turning  to  me  said  :  "  That's  a 
fighter,  that  brother  of  yours." 

"Yes,"  I  replied;  "but,  captain,  he  is  very 
young,  very  enthusiastic,  and  very  hot-tempered; 
I  hope — I  hope  you'll  overlook  —  his  —  er  — 
intemperateness  and — " 

"Thunder,  man,  do  you  suppose  I've  got 
any  grudge  against  a  fellow  that  fights 
like  that  ? "  roared  the  gallant  captain. 

As  I  rode  back  through  the  woods,  it  seemed 
to  me  about  the  brightest  October  morning  that 
I  had  ever  seen,  even  in  that  superb  Carolina 
climate. 


AROUND   THE   CAMP-FIRE 

IT  was  a  kind  of  off-night,  the  23d  of  October, 
1862,  twenty-four  hours  after  the  battle  of 
Pocotaligo,  on  the  South  Carolina  coast. 

We  had  to  stop  over  there  until  morning, 
because  the  creek  was  out  of  its  banks,  and  we 
couldn't  get  across  without  daylight.  There 
were  only  about  a  dozen  of  us,  and  we  had  to 
build  a  camp-fire  under  the  trees. 

After  supper  we  fell  to  talking,  and  naturally 
we  talked  of  war  things.  There  wasn't  anything 
else  to  talk  about  then. 

There  was  the  long-legged  mountaineer,  with 
the  deep  voice,  and  the  drawl  in  his  speech  which 
aided  the  suggestion  that  he  kept  his  voice  in 
his  boots  and  had  to  pump  it  up  when  anything 
was  to  be  said.  Opposite  him  was  the  alert, 
rapid-speaking  fellow,  who  had  come  in  as  a 
conscript  and  had  made  a  superb  volunteer,  —  a 
fellow  who  had  an  opinion  ready  made  on  every 
subject  that  could  be  mentioned,  and  who  was 
accustomed  to  wind  up  most  conversations  with 
a  remark  so  philosophical  as  to  seem  strangely 
out  of  keeping  with  the  rest  of  the  inconsequent 
things  that  he  had  said.     Then  there  were  the 


12  Aronud  the  Camp-fire 

two  mountaineers  who  never  said  anything  be- 
cause they  never  had  anything  to  say.  They 
had  reached  that  point  of  intellectual  develop- 
ment where  the  theory  is  accepted  that  there 
ought  to  be  thought  behind  every  utterance ; 
and  under  this  misapprehension  they  abstained 
from  utterance. 

Joe  was  there,  but  Joe  wasn't  talking  that 
night.  Joe  was  surly  and  sullen.  He  had  had 
to  kill  his  horse  at  Pocotaligo  the  day  before, 
and  all  the  honors  he  had  harvested  from  that 
action  had  not  reconciled  him  to  the  loss.  The 
new  horse  he  had  drawn  was,  in  his  opinion, 
"a  beast."  Of  course  all  horses  are  beasts,  but 
that  isn't  precisely  what  Joe  meant.  Besides, 
he  had  received  a  letter  from  his  sweetheart  just 
before  we  left  camp,  —  she's  his  wife  now,  and 
the  mother  of  his  dozen  or  more  children,  —  in 
which  that  young  woman  had  expressed  doubts 
as  to  whether,  after  all,  he  was  precisely  the 
kind  of  man  to  whom  she  ought  to  "  give  her 
life."  Joe  was  only  seventeen  years  of  age  at 
that  time,  and  he  minded  little  things  like  that. 
Still  again,  Joe  had  the  toothache.  Besides  that, 
we  were  hungry  after  our  exceedingly  scant 
meal  of  roasted  sweet  potatoes.  Besides  that, 
it  was  raining. 

All  the  circumstances  contributed  to  make  us 
introspective  and  psychological  in  our  conversa- 
tion. 


Around  the  Camp-fire  13 

The  long-legged  mountaineer  with  the  deep 
voice  was  telling  some  entirely  inconsequent 
story  about  somebody  who  wasn't  known  to  any 
of  us,  and  none  of  us  was  listening.  After  a 
while  he  said  :  "He  was  that  sort  of  a  feller 
that  never  felt  fear  in  his  life." 

From  Joe :  "  There  never  was  any  such 
fellow." 

The  long  mountaineer  :  "  Well,  that's  what  he 
said,  anyhow." 

From  Joe  :  "  He  lied,  then." 

"Well,"  continued  the  long-legged  mountain- 
eer, "  that's  what  he  said,  and  he  sort  o'  lived  up 
to  it.  If  he  had  any  fear,  he  didn't  show  it  till 
that  time  I  was  tellin'  you  about,  when  he  went 
all  to  pieces  and  showed  the  white  feather." 

"There,"  growled  Joe,  "what  did  I  tell  you? 
He  was  lying  all  the  time." 

The  postscript  philosopher  on  the  other  side 
of  the  fire  broke  in,  saying :  "  Well,  maybe  his 
breakfast  went  bad  on  him  that  morning.  An 
overdone  egg  would  make  a  coward  out  of  the 
Duke  of  Wellington." 

Joe  made  the  general  reflection  that  "  some 
people  locate  their  courage  in  their  transverse 
colons." 

"What's  a  transverse  colon?"  asked  one  of 
the  mountaineers.  Joe  got  up,  stretched  him- 
self, and  made  no  answer.  Perhaps  none  was 
expected. 


14  Around  the  Camp-fire 

"Well,"  asked  the  long-legged  mountaineer, 
"  ain't  they  people  that  don't  feel  no  fear  ?  " 

The  glib  little  fellow  quickly  responded : 
"  Let's  find  out.  Let's  hold  an  experience 
meeting.  I  suppose  we're  a  pretty  fairly  repre- 
sentative body,  and  I  move  that  each  fellow  tells 
honestly  how  he  feels  when  he  is  going  into 
battle;  for  instance,  when  the  skirmishers  are 
at  work  in  front,  and  we  know  that  the  next  two 
minutes  will  bring  on  the  business." 

"Infernally  bad,"  growled  Joe;  "and  any- 
body that  pretends  to  feel  otherwise  lies." 

The  postscript  philosopher  replied  :  "  I  never 
saw  yon  show  any  fear,  Joe." 

"  That's  because  I'm  too  big  a  coward  to  show 
it,"  said  Joe. 

Even  the  two  reticent  mountaineers  under- 
stood that. 

One  of  them  was  moved  to  break  the  silence. 
At  last  he  had,  if  not  a  thought,  yet  an  emotion 
to  stand  sponsor  for  utterance. 

"/  always  feel,"  said  he,  "as  though  the 
squegees  had  took  hold  of  my  knees.  There 
ain't  anything  of  me  for  about  a  minute  —  ex- 
ceptin'  a  spot  in  the  small  of  my  back.  I  al- 
ways wish  I  was  a  woman  or  a  baby,  or  dead  or 
something  like  that.  After  a  while  I  git  holt  of 
myself  and  I  says  to  myself,  '  Bill,  you've  got 
to  stand  up  to  the  rack,  fodder  or  no  fodder.' 
After  that  it  all  comes  sort  of  easy  like,  you 


Around  the  Camp-fire  15 

know,  because  the  firin'  begins,  and  after  the 
firin'  begins  you're  doin'  somethin',  you  see,  and 
when  you're  fightin'  like,  things  don't  seem  so 
bad.     I  s'pose  you've  all  noticed  that." 

From  Joe :  "  In  all  the  works  on  psychology 
it  has  been  recognized  as  a  universal  principle, 
that  the  mind  when  occupied  with  a  superior 
consideration  is  able  to  free  itself  from  consid- 
erations of  a  lesser  sort." 

The  mountaineer  looked  at  him  helplessly  and 
said  nothing. 

The  postscript  philosopher  began  :  "  I  shall 
never  forget  my  first  battle.  It  wasn't  much  of 
a  battle  either,  but  it  was  lively  while  it  lasted. 
Unfortunately  for  me  it  was  one  of  those  fights 
where  you  have  to  wait  for  the  enemy  to  begin. 
I  was  tender  then.  I  had  just  left  home,  and 
every  time  I  looked  at  the  little  knickknacks 
mother  and  the  girls  had  given  me  to  make 
camp  life  comfortable,  —  for  bless  my  soul  they 
thought  we  lived  in  camp,  —  every  time  I 
looked  at  these  things  I  grew  teary.  There 
oughtn't  to  be  any  bric-a-brac  of  that  kind  given 
to  a  fellow  when  he  goes  into  the  army.  It 
isn't  fit.     It  worries  him." 

He  was  silent  for  a  minute.  So  were  the  rest 
of  us.  We  all  had  bric-a-brac  to  remember.  He 
resumed : 

"  We  were  lying  there  in  the  edge  of  a  piece 
of  woods  with  a  sloping  meadow  in  front,  crossed 


1 6  Around  the  Camp-fire 

by  a  stone  wall  heavily  overgrown  with  vines. 
At  the  other  edge  of  the  meadow  was  another 
strip  of  woods.  The  enemy  were  somewhere 
in  there.  We  knew  they  were  coming,  because 
the  pickets  had  been  driven  in,  and  we  stood 
there  waiting  for  them.  The  waiting  was  the 
worst  of  it,  and  as  we  waited  I  got  to  feeling 
in  my  pockets  and  —  pulled  out  a  little,  old 
three-cornered  pincushion.  Conscience  knows  I 
wouldn't  have  pulled  out  that  pincushion  at  that 
particular  minute  to  have  won  a  battle.  I've  got 
it  now.  I  never  had  any  use  for  a  pincushion 
because  I  never  could  pin  any  two  things  to- 
gether the  way  a  woman  can,  but  a  man  can't 
make  his  womenkind  believe  that :  I've  kept  it 
all  through  the  war,  and  when  I  go  back  home 
—  if  it  suits  the  Yankees  that  I  ever  go  back  at 
all  —  I'm  going  to  give  it  as  a  souvenir  to  the 
little  sister  that  made  it  for  me.  And  I'm  going 
to  tell  her  that  it  was  that  pincushion,  little  three- 
cornered  thing  that  it  is,  that  made  a  man  out  of 
me  that  day. 

"  My  first  thought  as  I  pulled  it  out  was  that 
I  wanted  to  go  home  and  give  the  war  up ;  but 
then  came  another  kind  of  a  thought.  I  said, 
'  The  little  girl  wouldn't  have  given  that  pincush- 
ion to  me  if  she  hadn't  understood  that  I  was 
going  off  to  fight  for  the  country.'  So  I  said  to 
myself,  '  Old  boy,  you've  got  to  stand  your  hand 
pat.'     And  now  whenever  we  go  into  battle  I 


Around  the  Camp-fire  17 

always  brace  myself  up  a  little  by  feeling  in  my 
breeches  pocket  and  sort  of  shaping  out  that 
pincushion." 

From  Joe :  "  It's  a  good  story,  but  the  rest  of 
us  haven't  any  pincushions.  Besides  that,  it's 
raining."  I  couldn't  help  observing  that  Joe 
drew  that  afternoon's  letter  out  of  his  pocket 
and  fumbled  it  a  little,  while  the  long-legged 
mountaineer  was  straightening  out  his  limbs  and 
his  thoughts  for  his  share  in  the  conversation. 
He  said  in  basso  profundo :  "  The  fact  is  I'm 
always  so  skeered  just  before  a  fight  that  I 
can't  remember  afterwards  how  I  did  feel.  I 
know  only  this  much,  that  that  last  three  minutes 
before  the  bullets  begin  to  whistle  and  the  shells 
to  howl,  takes  more  out  of  me  than  six  hours 
straightaway  fightin'  afterwards  does." 

From  Joe :  "  There  must  be  a  lot  in  you  at 
the  start,  then." 

There  were  still  two  men  unheard  from  in  the 
experience  meeting.  Some  one  of  us  called 
upon  them  for  an  expression  of  opinion. 

"  I  donno.     I  never  thought,"  said  one. 

"Nuther  did  I,"  said  the  other. 

"Of  course  you  didn't,"  said  Joe. 

Then  the  postscript  philosopher,  rising  and 
stretching  himself,  remarked :  "  I  reckon  that 
if  any  man  goes  into  a  fight  without  being 
scared,  that  man  is  drunk  or  crazy." 

Then  we  all  lay  down  and  went  to  sleep. 


AN    UNFINISHED    FIGHT 

JACK  SWAN  was  the  best  swordsman  in 
the  regiment  —  probably  the  best  in  the 
army.  Jack  was  a  Marylander,  who  came  south 
singing  "  My  Maryland,"  and  heartily  believing 
in  the  assertion  of  that  song  that 

"  She  breathes,  she  burns,  she'll  come,  she'll  come, 
Maryland,  my  Maryland ! " 

Like  most  men  from  border  states  he  repre- 
sented a  house  divided  against  itself.  In  his 
case  the  division  was  peculiarly  distressing. 

He  was  an  enthusiastic  Southerner.  His  twin 
brother  was  an  equally  enthusiastic  Union  man. 
The  one  was  in  the  one  army  as  a  matter  of 
conscience,  and  the  other  in  the  other  for  pre- 
cisely the  same  reason.  It  was  always  a  grief 
to  Jack  that  this  separation  had  come  between 
him  and  the  curly-headed  twin  brother,  with 
whom  he  had  slept  in  infancy,  and  who  had 
been  his  comrade  until  that  terrible  fratricidal 
war  had  parted  them. 

He  used  to  talk  with  us  about  it  around  the 
camp-fire,  and  was  especially  sad  over  it  when 
any  of  us  managed  to  get  off  for  a  day  or  a 
18 


An    Unfinished  Fight  19 

week  to  visit  our  homes.  His  home  was  beyond 
the  lines ;  and  in  all  that  country  for  which  he 
was  fighting  there  was  no  human  being  whom 
he  could  call  kin. 

He  had  this  comfort,  however,  that  his  brother 
and  he  were  never  likely  to  meet  in  the  conflict 
of  arms.  For  to  avoid  that  the  brother  had 
betaken  himself  to  the  West  and  was  serving  in 
Mississippi.  But  there  was  always  the  terrible 
chance  that  in  the  shifting  of  troops  they  two 
might  some  day,  unknown  to  each  other,  be  fight- 
ing on  opposite  sides  of  the  same  field.  That, 
in  fact,  is  what  happened  at  Brandy  Station, 
and  it  happened  more  dramatically  than  either 
of  the  brothers  had  anticipated. 

The  conflict  at  Brandy  Station  was  perhaps 
the  greatest  cavalry  fight  of  the  war.  It  was 
the  one  contest  in  which  large  bodies  of  armed 
and  trained  horsemen,  under  the  greatest  cavalry 
leaders  on  either  side,  met  fairly  in  conflict  with 
little  or  no  interference  from  troops  of  other 
arms. 

It  was  the  only  contest  of  the  kind,  so  far  as 
I  know,  in  which  highly  expert  swordsmen  met 
each  other  fairly  in  single  combat.  There  was 
on  both  sides  a  chivalric  feeling  akin  to  that  of 
the  "knights  of  old,"  which  prompted  men  not 
to  interfere  when  two  well-matched  cavaliers 
met  each  other  with  naked  blades. 

Jack  Swan  was  naturally  eager  for  a  fray  of 


20  An    Unfinished  Fight 

this  sort.  He  knew  and  mightily  rejoiced  in  his 
superb  skill  with  the  sabre. 

He  watched  anxiously  for  his  opportunity. 
Presently  it  came. 

A  singularly  lithe  young  fellow  from  one  of 
the  Northern  regiments  met  and  slew,  in  the 
open  field,  one  of  our  officers.  Thereupon  Jack 
turned  to  his  captain  and  said :  "  If  I  have  your 
leave,  captain,  I'd  like  to  try  conclusions  with 
that  young  fellow  myself.  He  seems  to  know 
how  to  handle  sharp  steel." 

The  captain  nodded  assent,  and  Jack  put 
spurs  to  his  horse.  The  two  men  met  in  mid- 
field.  They  crossed  swords  as  a  couple  of  gladi- 
ators might,  while  a  thousand  eyes  watched 
anxiously  for  the  result. 

It  was  manifestly  to  be  a  contest  of  experts, 
a  battle  of  the  giants,  for  both  men  were  above 
the  average  in  height  and  weight,  and  both 
knew  every  trick  of  the  sabre. 

Their  swords  drew  fire  from  each  other's 
edge  at  the  first  onset. 

Then  they  paused  strangely  and  looked  at 
each  other.  Then  Jack  deliberately  threw  his 
sabre  upon  the  ground  and  uncovered  his  head. 

His  adversary  could  have  run  him  through 
on  the  instant,  but  the  action  of  Jack  seemed  to 
give  him  pause.  He  stopped  with  his  sword 
poised  at  the  tierce  thrust.  He  leant  forward 
eagerly  and   gazed  into  the   calm  eyes  of   the 


An    Unfinished  Fight  2 1 

Confederate.  Then  he,  too,  abandoning  his 
purpose,  threw  his  weapon  to  the  ground. 

We  were  all  eagerness  and  curiosity ;  and 
neither  our  eagerness  nor  our  curiosity  was  re- 
lieved when  the  two  men  grasped  each  other's 
hand,  swung  their  horses  around,  and  each 
returned  unarmed  to  his  own  line. 

When  Jack  rode  up  he  had  just  six  words  of 
explanation  to  make. 

"That  man,"  he  said,  "is  my  twin  brother." 

That  seemed  to  be  all  there  was  to  say. 
"  Blood  is  thicker  than  water." 


A  FAMILY  THAT  HAD  NO  LUCK 

THERE  were  two  instances  of  supreme 
heroism  in  the  Civil  War.  One  was  upon 
the  one  side,  the  other  upon  the  other. 

One  was  the  charge  of  Pickett's  Southerners 
at  Gettysburg.  The  other  was  the  heroic  series 
of  assaults,  made  by  the  Northern  troops  on 
Marye's  Heights,  at  Fredericksburg. 

General  Lee's  works  in  the  last-named  battle 
were  high  up  on  the  hill.  Crossing  the  field  in 
front  of  them  was  a  sunken  road  —  a  perfect 
breastwork  already  formed.  The  main  body  of 
the  army  was  in  the  works  above ;  but  a  multi- 
tude of  us  were  thrown  forward  into  the  sunken 
road. 

The  enemy  knew  nothing  of  this  geographical 
peculiarity.  But  their  first  advance  revealed 
the  impossibility  of  breaking  Lee's  lines  at  that 
point.  The  column  that  advanced  was  swept 
away  as  with  a  broom  before  it  got  within  firing 
distance  of  the  works  it  supposed  itself  to  be 
attacking.  The  men  knew  what  that  meant. 
Wiser  than  their  general,  they  saw  the  necessity 
of  selecting  some  other  point  of  attack.  Never- 
theless when  their   commander  persisted,  they 

22 


A  Family  that  had  no  Luck         23 

six  times  came  unflinchingly  to  an  assault  which 
every  man  of  them  knew  to  be  hopeless.  This 
may  not  have  been  war,  but  it  was  heroism. 

We  who  faced  them  there  honored  it  as  such. 

Just  as  we  tumbled  into  the  sunken  road,  an 
old  man  came  in  bearing  an  Enfield  rifle  and 
wearing  an  old  pot  hat  of  the  date  of  1857  or 
thereabouts.  With  a  gentle  courtesy  that  was 
unusual  in  war,  he  apologized  to  the  two  men 
between  whom  he  placed  himself,  saying :  "  I 
hope  I  don't  crowd  you,  but  I  must  find  a  place 
somewhere  from  which  I  can  shoot." 

At  that  moment  one  of  the  great  assaults 
occurred.  The  old  man  used  his  gun  like  an 
expert.  He  wasted  no  bullet.  He  took  aim 
every  time  and  fired  only  when  he  knew  his 
aim  to  be  effective.  Yet  he  fired  rapidly.  Tom 
Booker,  who  stood  next  to  him,  said  as  the  ad- 
vancing column  was  swept  away :  "  You  must 
have  shot  birds  on  the  wing  in  your  time." 

The  old  man  answered  :  "  I  did  up  to  twenty 
year  ago;  but  then  I  sort  o'  lost  my  sight,  you 
know,  and  my  interest  in  shootin'." 

"  Well,  you've  got  'em  both  back  again," 
called  out  Billy  Goodwin  from  down  the  line. 

"Yes,"  said  the  old  man.  "You  see  I  had 
to.  It's  this  way  :  I  had  six  boys  and  six  gells. 
When  the  war  broke  out  I  thought  the  six  boys 
could  do  my  family's  share  o'  the  fightin'.  Well, 
they  did  their  best,  but  they  didn't  have  no  luck. 


24         A  Family  that  had  no  Luck 

One  of  'em  was  killed  at  Manassas,  two  others 
in  a  cavalry  raid,  and  the  other  three  fell  in  dif- 
ferent actions  —  'long  the  road  as  you  might  say. 
We  ain't  seemed  to  a  had  no  luck.  But  it's  just 
come  to  this,  that  if  the  family  is  to  be  repre- 
sented, the  old  man  must  git  up  his  shootin' 
agin,  or  else  one  o'  the  gells  would  have  to  take 
a  hand.     So  here  I  am." 

Just  then  the  third  advance  was  made.  A 
tremendous  column  of  heroic  fellows  was  hurled 
upon  us,  only  to  be  swept  away  as  its  predeces- 
sors had  been.  Two  or  three  minutes  did  the 
work,  but  at  the  end  of  that  time  the  old  man 
fell  backward,  and  Tom  Booker  caught  him  in 
his  arms. 

"  You're  shot,"  he  said. 

"  Yes.  The  family  don't  seem  to  have  no 
luck.  If  one  o'  my  gells  comes  to  you,  you'll 
give  her  a  fair  chance  to  shoot  straight,  won't 
you,  boys  ? " 


WILLIAM 

JT  was  during  the  long  waiting  time. 
The  battle  of  Manassas  had  been  fought 
in  July,  and  for  months  afterward,  there  was 
nothing  for  us  to  do.  We  had  failed  to  assail 
Washington,  and  the  enemy  was  not  yet  suffi- 
ciently recovered  from  his  demoralization  —  the 
completest  that  ever  overcame  an  army  —  to 
assail  us. 

We  had  time,  therefore,  to  quarrel  among 
ourselves. 

Two  men  had  met  in  a  glade  in  a  thicket 
some  distance  from  the  camp.  They  were  tak- 
ing their  quarrel  very  seriously,  and  had  met 
to  fight  it  out  without  the  formality  of  seconds 
or  other  familiar  frills  of  the  duello.  They 
crossed  sabres. 

It  was  then  that  Billy  Gresham  broke  through 
the  bushes  and  interposed. 

Billy  was  a  recognized  "  character."  He  was  a 
phenomenal  egotist,  but  he  rarely  used  the  first 
personal  pronoun  singular.  Instead  of  saying 
"I"  or  "me,"  he  usually  said  "William."  But 
he  said  it  with  an  unctuousness  and  appreciation 
of  its  significance  that  cannot  be  described  in 
words. 

25 


26  William 

Also  Billy  Gresham  always  did  what  he 
pleased,  without  a  thought  of  having  to  give 
an  account  of  his  conduct  to  anybody.  His 
extraordinary  loquacity  was  a  perfect  safeguard 
against  any  possible  challenge  of  resentment. 
He  could  talk  anybody  down  and  close  the 
conversation  at  his  own  sweet  will.  The  worst 
that  his  adversary  could  do  was  to  laugh  at 
him,  and  Billy  didn't  mind  that  in  the  least. 
He  regarded  it  rather  as  a  grateful  tribute  to 
his  humor. 

Just  as  the  two  men  crossed  swords,  Billy 
broke  through  the  bushes,  and  interposed  his 
blade  —  with  a  very  good  imitation  of  stage 
heroism —  between  the  combatants.  Then,  with 
all  the  authority  of  an  expert  in  a  matter  he 
knew  nothing  about,  he  proceeded  to  lay  down 
laws  of  his  own  extemporaneous  invention  for 
the  governance  of  single  combat. 

"  Stop,  gentlemen ! "  he  cried  out.  Then, 
laying  his  sword  on  the  ground  between  them, 
he  said :  "  You  must  not  cross  my  sword  with 
yours,  gentlemen.  To  do  that  would  be  to  put 
an  affront  upon  William  which  only  blood  could 
efface,  and  it  must  be  the  blood  of  the  offender 
—  not  the  gore  of  private  William  Gresham." 

The  two  men  had  come  to  a  pause,  of  course. 
Equally  of  course,  they  were  smiling  at  the 
ridiculousness  of  Billy  Gresham's  interference 
and  the  absurdity  of  his  chatter. 


William  2  7 

Still  their  purpose  to  fight  remained  in  un- 
diminished intensity.  Seeing  this,  Billy  re- 
sumed his  talk. 

"  If  you  are  determined  to  fight,"  he  said, 
"you  can  do  so.  Far  be  it  from  William  to 
interrupt  a  prearranged  engagement  for  mutual 
dissection  between  two  of  his  friends.  But 
William  always  likes  to  have  a  little  money  up 
on  the  probabilities." 

Then  pulling  out  a  pocket-book,  which  was 
fat  with  humorous  newspaper  clippings,  but 
which  both  men  knew  to  contain  nothing  more 
valuable,  he  caressed  it  lovingly  and  said : 
"  Before  you  proceed,  William  wants  to  bet 
one  hundred  dollars  to  ten  with  one  or  both 
of  you  —  you  can  make  it  a  thousand  dollars 
to  a  hundred,  if  you  prefer  —  that  neither  of 
you  two  sublimated  idiots  can  give  William 
a  reasonable  excuse  for  this  quarrel.  Come 
now,  before  you  enter  upon  the  business  of 
mutual  slaughter,  make  a  bet  that  will  provide 
in  some  degree  for  the  loved  ones  dependent 
on  you." 

By  that  time  both  men  were  laughing,  for, 
after  all,  their  quarrel  was  a  trifling  one.  They 
would  not  have  quarrelled  at  all  if  the  intensity 
of  the  nervous  strain  put  upon  them  by  the 
war  had  been  relieved  by  active  duty. 

"Now,"  said  Billy,  "William  has  another  bet 
to  make.     He  offers  a  hundred  to  one  that  if 


28  William 

the  colonel  catches  you  fellows  at  this  sort  of 
idiotic  performance,  he'll  take  the  '  honor '  out 
of  both  of  you  by  making  you  grub  stumps  for 
weeks  to  come.  Put  up  your  swords  and  shake 
hands,  or  else  take  the  bets." 

The  absurdity  of  the  situation  ended  it.  Billy 
remarked  :  "  Now  let  William  give  you  a  tip. 
There  is  the  enemy  to  fight;  and  if  William 
does  not  hopelessly  misunderstand  the  temper 
of  George  B.  McClellan's  army,  they  will  give 
us  all  the  fighting  we  want  without  anything 
of  this  sort." 

It  was  Billy  who,  at  the  end  of  the  war, 
protested  his  loyalty  to  the  Southern  cause  by 
vowing  that  he  would  never  send  a  letter  un- 
less it  could  go  under  cover  of  a  Southern 
postage-stamp.  I  am  credibly  informed  that 
for  thirty  odd  years  he  has  kept  this  vow. 

It  must  have  spared  him  a  great  deal  of 
trouble. 


A   CRADLE   CAPTAIN 

THEY  said  we  had  robbed  the  cradle  and 
the  grave  to  recruit  our  army. 

We  had. 

The  cradle  contingent  acquitted  itself  particu- 
larly well. 

He  was  a  very  little  fellow.  He  was  said  to 
be  fourteen  years  old.  He  didn't  look  it.  In 
his  captain's  uniform  he  suggested  the  need  of 
a  nurse  with  cap  and  apron.  But  when  it 
came  to  doing  the  work  of  a  soldier  the  impres- 
sion was  different. 

It  was  in  1864,  late  summer.  We  were  in 
the  trenches  outside  a  fortification  engaged  in 
bombarding  Fort  Harrison,  below  Richmond. 
The  enemy  had  captured  that  work,  and  it  was 
deemed  necessary  to  drive  him  out.  To  that 
end  we  had  been  sent  from  Petersburg  to  the 
north  side  of  James  River,  with  twenty-two 
mortars  to  rain  a  hundred  shells  a  minute  into 
the  fort  preparatory  to  the  infantry  charge. 

A  gun-boat  had  been  ordered  up  the  river  to 
help  in  the  bombardment.  The  gun-boat  mis- 
took us  for  Fort  Harrison  and  opened  upon 
our  defenceless  rear.  Its  shells  were  about  the 
29 


30  A   Cradle  Captain 

size  and  shape  of  a  street  lamp,  and  they 
wrought  fearful  havoc  among  us. 

The  Cradle  Captain  had  charge  of  the  signal 
operator  —  a  stalwart  mountaineer  of  six  feet 
four  or  so. 

The  Cradle  Captain  ordered  him  to  mount 
upon  the  glacis  and  signal  the  ship  to  cease 
firing.  The  man  was  not  a  coward;  but  the 
fire  was  terrific.  He  hesitated.  That  Cradle 
Captain  leaped  like  a  cat  upon  the  glacis,  which 
the  shells  were  splitting  every  second.  He 
pulled  out  two  pistols.  He  presented  one  at 
each  side  of  the  mountaineer's  head.  Then  in 
a  little,  childish,  piping  voice  he  said :  "  Get  up 
here  and  do  your  duty,  or  I'll  blow  your  brains 
out." 

We  rejoiced  that  the  lead,  which  at  that 
moment  laid  the  little  soldier  low,  came  from 
the  enemy's  guns,  and  not  from  our  own  mis- 
taken comrades.  The  Cradle  Captain  was  glad, 
too,  for  as  he  was  carried  away  on  a  litter,  he 
laughed  out  between  groans :  "  It  wasn't  our 
men  that  did  it,  for  I  had  made  that  hulking 
idiot  get  in  that  signal  all  right,  anyhow." 


GET   UP    HERE   AND    DO   YOUR   DUTY." 


WHO    IS    RUSSELL? 

I  SAW  him  for  the  first  time  in  1862. 
We  were  stationed  on  the  coast  of  South 
Carolina,  and  never  was  there  an  idler  set  of 
soldiers  than  we. 

We  were  in  the  midst  of  a  great  war,  it  is 
true,  and  ours  was  a  fighting  battery  with  dates 
on  its  battle  banner;  but  on  the  coast  we  had 
literally  nothing  to  do.  The  position  of  our 
camp  was  determined  by  military  geography, 
and  it  could  not  be  changed.  A  fight  was  pos- 
sible any  day,  and  now  and  then  a  fight  came. 
But  we  knew  in  advance  precisely  where  .it 
must  be  waged,  and  until  our  foemen  chose  to 
bring  it  about,  we  had  no  occasion  for  march- 
ing or  bivouacking.  They  were  on  the  sea 
islands.  We  were  on  the  mainland.  We  had 
no  means  of  crossing  to  the  islands.  They 
could  cross  to  the  mainland  whenever  they 
pleased.  When  they  came,  it  was  our  business 
to  meet  them  and  keep  them  from  reaching 
the  line  of  railroad  along  the  coast. 

Every  little  stream  and  every  little  inlet  was 
bordered    by    an    impassable    morass,    which 
could  be  crossed  only  by  way  of  a  high  and 
31 


32  Who  is  Russell? 

narrow  causeway.  The  places  where  the  roads 
crossed  the  streams  were,  therefore,  the  pre- 
destined battlefields.  We  were  stationed  with 
reference  to  these  crossings. 

We  idled  away  the  time,  and  like  all  idle 
people  near  a  small  railroad  station  we  knew 
of  the  comings  and  goings  of  everybody  in  the 
country  roundabout. 

Everybody,  that  is  to  say,  except  Russell. 

His  coming  was  a  mystery.  In  fact,  he  did 
not  come  at  all.  He  simply  appeared  one 
evening  as  a  looker-on  at  roll-call. 

There  was  no  way  by  which  he  could  have 
come  to  Pocotaligo  except  by  train ;  and  we 
knew  that  he  had  not  come  by  train.  The 
whole  body  of  us  regularly  attended  the  in- 
coming of  every  train,  and  promptly  pumped 
all  the  news  out  of  every  arriving  passenger. 

Russell  had  not  come  by  train.  Therefore 
Russell  had  not  come  at  all.     Yet  there  he  was. 

He  was  a  comely  young  fellow.  So  shapely 
were  his  limbs  and  so  exact  the  proportions  of 
his  frame  that  no  one,  without  a  second  look  at 
him,  would  have  realized  his  symmetry,  his  ex- 
traordinary strength,  or  his  activity.  His  head 
was  a  study  for  the  sculptor.  In  limbs,  torso, 
features,  complexion,  and  bearing  he  stood  there 
in  the  Southern  sunset  a  very  model  of  manly 
beauty. 

When  the  roll-call  was  ended,  he  came  up  to 


Who  is  Russell?  t>3 

me,  and,  touching  his  hat  gracefully,  introduced 
himself. 

"  My  name  is  William  Russell.  I  shall  be 
obliged  if  you  will  let  me  remain  with  your 
men  over  night.  I  shall  probably  ask  to  en- 
list to-morrow." 

His  words  were  simple  enough,  and  his  man- 
ner was  that  of  a  modest  gentleman ;  but  there 
was  that  in  his  voice  that  fascinated  me  beyond 
measure.  Had  any  other  stranger  come  up  to 
me  with  a  like  request,  I  should  have  ques- 
tioned him  closely,  and  possibly  have  turned 
him  over  for  the  night  to  the  hospitality  of  one 
of  the  messes.  With  Russell  I  did  nothing  of 
the  sort.  He  was  a  gentleman  visiting  our 
camp.  I  could  do  no  less  than  invite  him  to 
sup  and  lodge  with  me.  He  had  sought  no 
such  hospitality,  but  when  I  offered  it,  he 
frankly  accepted  it. 

I  found  him  to  be  a  particularly  agreeable 
guest.  He  talked  fluently,  but  modestly,  on  all 
subjects  as  they  arose.  Before  my  brother 
officers  came  into  my  quarters  for  our  nightly 
game  of  whist,  I  had  discovered  that  Russell 
was  not  only  a  man  of  broad  general  education, 
but  one  thoroughly  familiar  with  English,  Ger- 
man, and  French  literature  as  well.  We  learned 
very  indirectly  that  he  had  travelled  extensively, 
and  that  travel  had  wrought  in  him  its  perfect 
work  in  making  him  an  agreeable  companion. 


34  Who  is  Russell? 

The  next  morning  he  expressed  a  wish  to 
enlist  with  us.  He  persisted  in  this,  in  spite 
of  our  assurances  that  our  rude,  uncultivated 
mountaineers  were  not  fit  companions  for  him. 

After  his  enlistment  he  carefully  avoided 
everything  like  presumption  upon  our  previous 
hospitality,  or  upon  his  own  evident  superiority. 
He  knew  the  distinction  between  officers  and 
enlisted  men,  and  he  observed  it  with  a  rigidity 
wholly  unknown  in  our  rather  democratic  ser- 
vice. I  was  glad  sometimes  to  seek  him  out 
when  I  wanted  a  companion,  and  on  such  oc- 
casions he  responded  promptly  to  my  invita- 
tions, but  he  never  once  came  to  my  quarters, 
or  those  of  any  other  officer,  uninvited. 

He  was  always  quiet  and  modest,  and  it  was 
only  by  accident  that  we  learned  little  by  little 
how  many  and  varied  his  accomplishments  were. 
It  was  not  only  that  he  never  boasted ;  he  was 
even  shy  of  letting  us  find  out  for  ourselves 
how  many  things  he  could  do  surprisingly 
well. 

The  men  had  built  a  number  of  gymnastic 
structures,  and  of  afternoons  their  contests  of 
strength  and  skill  were  attended  by  everybody 
in  the  neighborhood.  For  more  than  a  month 
Russell  looked  on  as  a  casually  interested  spec- 
tator. One  afternoon,  however,  some  of  our 
best  gymnasts  were  trying  to  accomplish  a 
new  and  rather  difficult  feat.     When  they  were 


Who  is  Russell?  35 

ready  to  abandon  the  attempt  as  hopeless,  Rus- 
sell modestly  said  to  the  most  persistent  one 
among  them  :  "  I  think  if  you  will  reverse  the 
position  of  your  hands  you  can  do  that." 

The  man  reversed  his  hands,  but  awkwardly. 

"Not  that  way;  let  me  show  you,"  said 
Russell.  And  going  to  the  bars  he  quickly 
did  the  thing  himself  with  no  apparent  exer- 
tion whatever.  Then,  as  if  in  mere  wantonness 
of  strength  and  skill,  he  went  rapidly  through 
a  series  of  gymnastic  feats  of  the  most  difficult 
sort  imaginable,  ending  the  performance  with  a 
number  of  somersaults  that  would  have  done 
honor  to  an  acrobat.  When  he  had  done,  we 
all  clapped  hands  and  shouted  our  applause. 
Russell  simply  blushed  as  a  woman  might  and 
went  to  his  hut. 

I  never  knew  him  to  touch  the  bars  again, 
so  averse  was  he  to  anything  like  display. 

When  I  ventured  to  ask  him  in  private  one 
day  how  and  where  he  had  acquired  his  skill, 
he  replied :  "  Oh,  I  have  no  skill  to  speak  of 
in  the  matter.  It's  merely  a  trick  or  two  I 
picked  up  at  a  German  university." 

In  this  way  we  learned  one  thing  after  another 
about  the  man,  though  he  vouchsafed  us  no  in- 
formation concerning  his  past  history,  except  so 
much  as  we  had  discovered  in  mustering  him 
into  service.  That  consisted  of  but  one  fact : 
that  William  Russell  was   born  in    Kentucky ; 


36  Who  is  Russell? 

and  that  isolated  fact  was  a  falsehood,  as  Rus- 
sell afterwards  informed  me. 

One  day,  some  months  after  his  enlistment, 
there  was  an  explosion  in  camp. 

A  chief  of  caisson  had  been  tinkering  with  a 
shell  from  the  enemy's  camp  which  had  not 
burst.  It  exploded  in  his  hands,  literally  blow- 
ing one  of  them  off  midway  between  the  wrist 
and  the  elbow.  When  I  came  to  the  poor  fel- 
low he  was  lying  on  the  ground,  the  blood 
spurting  from  the  severed  artery. 

The  surgeon  and  all  my  brother  officers  had 
ridden  away,  no  one  knew  whither,  and  I  was 
completely  at  a  loss  to  know  what  to  do.  Before 
I  had  time  to  decide  anything,  Russell  pushed 
his  way  through  the  throng,  drew  out  his  hand- 
kerchief, knotted  it,  and  quickly  tightened  it 
around  the  man's  arm. 

"  Will  you  please  hold  that  steadily  ? "  said 
he  in  the  calmest  possible  voice  to  one  of  the 
excited  men.  Then  turning  to  me  and  touching 
his  cap,  he  said :  "  Will  you  allow  me  to  go  to 
the  surgeon's  quarters  for  some  necessary 
things?     I  think  I  may  help  this  poor  fellow." 

"Certainly,"  I  replied,  "if  you  can  do  any- 
thing for  him,  do  it  by  all  means." 

He  walked  rapidly,  but  without  a  sign  of  ex- 
citement, to  the  hospital  tent,  and  returned 
almost  immediately  with  some  bottles,  bandages, 
and  a  case  of  instruments. 


Who  is  Russell?  37 

Turning  to  me  he  said :  "  Will  you  do  me  the 
favor  to  put  your  finger  on  the  corporal's  pulse 
and  observe  its  beating  carefully  ?  If  it  sinks 
or  becomes  irregular,  please  let  me  know  imme- 
diately." 

With  that  he  saturated  a  handkerchief  with 
chloroform,  and  using  a  peremptory  form  of 
speech  for  the  first  time  in  my  experience  of 
him,  he  ordered  one  of  the  men  to  hold  it  to  the 
wounded  corporal's  nose. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  I  asked  in 
astonishment. 

"  I  am  going  to  amputate  this  man's  arm,  if 
you  have  no  objection,"  he  returned,  as  he 
opened  the  case  of  instruments.  And  he  did 
amputate  it  in  a  most  skilful  manner,  as  the 
surgeon  testified  on  his  return.  The  operation 
over,  Russell  gave  minute  directions  for  the  care 
of  the  wounded  man. 

My  astonishment  may  well  be  imagined.  The 
men,  however,  were  not  surprised.  Their  faith 
in  Russell  was  unbounded  already.  They  had 
so  often  seen  him  do  as  an  expert  things  that 
nobody  had  imagined  him  capable  of  doing  at 
all,  that  they  had  come  to  think  him  equal  to 
any  emergency,  as  indeed  it  seemed  that  he 
was. 

For  myself,  I  am  free  to  confess  that  my 
curiosity  was  sharply  piqued.  I  determined  to 
question  Russell  in  detail  about  himself  and  his 


38  Who  is  Russell? 

past  at  the  first  opportunity.  When  the  oppor- 
tunity came,  however,  the  man's  modest  dignity 
so  impressed  me  that  I  could  not  bring  myself 
to  do  anything  so  rude  and  discourteous.  I 
contented  myself  with  saying :  "Why,  Russell, 
I  didn't  know  you  were  a  surgeon  ?" 

"I  can  hardly  claim  to  be  that,"  he  replied, 
"  though  I  gave  some  little  attention  to  the  sub- 
ject while  I  was  abroad." 

It  then  occurred  to  me  to  suggest  the  pro- 
priety of  his  asking  for  a  surgeon's  commission, 
as  it  really  seemed  a  pity  that  a  man  so  accom- 
plished as  he  should  remain  a  private  in  a 
company  made  up  almost  entirely  of  illiterate 
mountaineers.  He  refused  to  entertain  the  idea 
for  a  moment,  saying  :  "  I  am  entirely  contented 
with  my  lot  and  do  not  care  to  change." 

One  day,  not  long  after  this  occurrence,  I 
was  playing  at  chess  with  Russell.  Apropos 
of  something  or  other,  I  told  him  an  anecdote 
illustrative  of  Japanese  character. 

"  Pardon  me,"  he  replied,  "  but  you  are  mis- 
informed," and  straightway  he  proceeded  to  tell 
me  many  interesting  facts  with  regard  to  the 
Orientals,  all  of  which  were  evidently  the  result 
of  personal  observation.  I  presently  discovered, 
as  I  thought,  that  Russell  had  been  an  officer  in 
the  United  States  navy,  and  that  he  had  gone 
to  Japan  with  Commodore  Perry's  expedition. 

When  a  month  or  two  later  our  battery  was 


Who  is  Russell?  39 

sent  to  a  little  place  immediately  on  the  water, 
and  a  good  deal  of  boat  service  was  expected  of 
us,  our  first  care  was  to  train  our  mountaineers 
in  the  use  of  oars  and  sails.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  Russell,  Joe,  and  myself,  not  a  man  in 
the  battery  knew  the  difference  between  a  mast 
and  a  keel.  It  was  determined,  therefore,  to 
divide  the  company  into  boat's  crews  for  drill, 
and  to  make  of  Russell  chief  drill  sergeant. 

When  the  order  providing  for  this  was  read 
on  parade,  Russell  said  nothing.  But  I  had 
hardly  reached  my  quarters  before  he  came, 
cap  in  hand,  asking  to  see  me  in  private. 

"  I  must  beg  you  to  excuse  me  from  this  boat- 
drill  duty ;  I  really  can't  do  it." 

"But  you  must,"  I  returned.  "The  men 
must  be  taught  to  handle  the  boats,  and  your 
skill  and  experience  are  quite  indispensable." 

"  But  I  have  no  skill  or  experience  in  the 
matter,"  he  replied.  "The  truth  is  I  do  not 
even  know  the  nomenclature  of  a  boat.  I  do 
know  the  bow  from  the  rudder,  but  that  is  the 
extreme  limit  of  my  knowledge  on  the  subject." 

This,  from  an  ex-naval  officer,  was  certainly 
rather  odd,  but  I  could  not  bring  myself  to 
question  this  modest  gentleman  further  on  the 
subject,  or  even  to  suspect  his  veracity,  in 
which  I  had  learned  to  repose  the  most  im- 
plicit confidence. 

He  was  not  at  all  averse  to  boating  duty  in 


40  Who  is  Russell? 

itself.  On  the  contrary,  when  an  oar  was  put 
into  his  hands,  his  supple  muscles  lent  them- 
selves with  a  will  to  the  severe  physical  strain. 
The  man  seemed  even  to  rejoice  in  the  oppor- 
tunity thus  given  him  to  bring  his  magnificent 
strength  into  play.  When  his  fellows  quitted 
the  boats  in  utter  weariness  he,  still  fresh,  would 
betake  himself  to  a  little  shell  and  row  her 
about  for  hours  in  mere  wantonness  of  unex- 
pended vitality. 

But  he  knew  nothing  of  boating.  He  was 
as  awkward  as  possible  at  first.  He  learned 
rapidly,  however,  and  soon  became  a  graceful 
oarsman  and  an  expert  sailor. 

I  was  puzzled.  I  could  not  reconcile  the 
man's  stories  of  naval  service  with  his  evident 
ignorance  of  everything  pertaining  to  a  boat. 
Yet  I  could  not  doubt  the  truthfulness  of  any 
of  his  statements.  Nobody  who  knew  his  gen- 
tleness, his  modesty,  and  his  translucent  integ- 
rity as  I  did  could  possibly  entertain  doubt  of 
his  truthfulness.  The  man's  face  was  of  itself 
a  certificate  of  his  entire  trustworthiness.  His 
conduct  and  his  manners  were  unexceptionable 
always.  The  man  himself  was  the  embodi- 
ment of  truth. 

Accordingly,  when  I  observed  some  tattoo 
marks  on  his  arm  one  day,  which  he  told  me 
were  put  there  while  he  was  in  the  navy,  it  did 
not  occur  to  me  to  question  him  as  to  the  truth 


Who  is  Russell?  41 

of  that  story.  On  the  contrary,  I  thought  at  the 
moment  of  a  possible  explanation  of  the  whole 
matter :  Perhaps  he  had  been  a  surgeon  in  the 
service,  and  if  so  his  technical  ignorance  of 
boating  was  not  altogether  unaccountable.  I 
was  surprised,  however,  to  see  that  the  letters 
on  his  arm  were  not  "  W.  R."  but  "  W.  W."  —  a 
fact  of  which  he  volunteered  an  explanation. 

"  My  name  is  not  Russell,"  he  said,  "  but 
Wallace.  Though  for  a  good  many  years  I 
have  preferred  to  use  my  mother's  rather  than 
my  father's  name." 

As  a  matter  of  course  I  asked  him  no  rude 
questions.  He  was  altogether  too  much  a  gen- 
tleman for  me  to  think  of  such  a  thing.  I  ac- 
cepted his  explanation  and  respected  his  wish 
to  be  called  "  Russell "  still.  He  imposed  no 
pledge  of  secrecy  upon  me,  but  I  kept  his 
secret  sacredly,  respecting  it  as  a  confidential 
communication  from  one  gentleman  to  another. 

I  had  hardly  settled  it  in  my  own  mind  that 
Russell's  connection  with  the  navy  had  been  in 
the  capacity  of  a  surgeon,  when  he  came  one 
day  with  the  request  that  he  might  be  allowed 
to  go  to  Charleston  for  the  purpose  of  standing 
an  examination  for  admission  to  the  navy  as  an 
officer. 

This  time,  I  confess,  I  was  astonished.  And 
so  I  went  with  him  to  Charleston  and  before 
the  board.     To  my  surprise,  he  passed  his  ex- 


42  Who  is  Rtissell? 

amination  so  brilliantly,  that  he  was  commis- 
sioned at  once  and  put  in  command  of  a  newly 
built  gun-boat.  Shortly  afterwards  he  handled 
his  vessel  so  well  in  a  fight  off  the  harbor 
as  to  secure  an  official  compliment  and  a  pro- 
motion. 

About  a  week  after  that  event  I  learned  that 
he  had  deserted  the  navy  and  was  among  the 
missing.  Apparently  the  poor  fellow  was  a 
man  running  away  from  his  past,  and  nothing 
was  so  disastrous  to  him  as  distinction. 

I  thus  lost  sight  of  Russell,  and  until  August, 
1873,  I  heard  no  more  of  him.  I  was  editing  a 
weekly  family  newspaper  in  New  York  at  that 
time,  and  oddly  enough  I  was  just  beginning  to 
write  this  sketch  of  my  singular  acquaintance 
when  Russell  himself  walked  into  my  office  at 
245  Broadway  and  asked  me  if  I  remembered 
him.  He  was  well  dressed,  in  a  quiet  drab  suit, 
and  was  scarcely  at  all  changed.  He  told  me 
that  he  was  married  and  was  living  at  a  certain 
number  in  West  43d  Street ;  that  he  was  prac- 
tising law,  being  senior  member  of  the  firm  of 
Wintermute  and  Russell,  for  that  his  real  name 
was  Wintermute,  and  that  his  partner,  Russell, 
was  a  cousin  on  the  mother's  side. 

He  gave  me  the  firm's  card,  and  begged  me 
to  call  upon  him,  both  at  his  house  and  at  his 
office,  which  of  course  I  promised  to  do. 

I  called  first  at  the  house.     It  was  a  well- 


Who  is  Russell?  43 

built  one  of  pressed  brick,  and  seemed  to  wear 
something  of  Russell's  own  air  of  quiet  dignity, 
standing  as  it  did  in  a  row  of  more  pretentious 
brown-stone  mansions.  The  door-plate  —  for 
door-plates  were  then  still  in  use  —  bore  the 
simple  word,  "  Wintermute." 

"  Is  Mr.  Wintermute  at  home  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Commander  Wintermute  is  in  his  library," 
answered  the  lackey,  laying  special  stress  upon 
the  naval  title. 

"Ah,  certainly,  Commander  Wintermute,"  I 
answered.  "  I  had  forgotten.  Will  you  give 
him  my  card  ?     I  am  an  old  friend." 

I  was  shown  into  the  parlor,  —  a  conspicu- 
ously tasteful  apartment,  —  furnished  exactly  as 
I  should  have  expected  Russell  to  furnish  it. 

After  a  little  the  door  opened,  and  an  elderly 
gentleman,  obviously  English,  entered,  holding 
my  card  in  a  puzzled  way  before  his  spectacled 
nose. 

"  Pardon  me,"  he  said.  "  The  servant  must 
have  misunderstood  you.  He  announced  you 
as  an  old  friend." 

"Yes,"  I  replied,  "I  asked  for  Commander 
Wintermute." 

"  I  am  he,"  replied  the  gentleman.  "  Though 
I  certainly  fail  to  recognize  either  your  name  or 
your  face.     There  must  be  a  mistake." 

"There  certainly  seems  to  be,"  I  answered, 
"unless   there   is   another   gentleman   in    your 


44  Who  is  Russell? 

family.  The  one  I  am  seeking  is  William 
Wintermute,  whose  mother's  name  was  Rus- 
sell." 

"Then  I  am  certainly  the  man,"  responded 
my  companion.  "  My  name  is  William  Winter- 
mute  and  my  mother's  name  was  Russell.  There 
is  no  other  gentleman  living  in  the  house,  and 
so  far  as  I  have  ever  heard  there  is  no  other 
William  Wintermute  anywhere." 

There  was  nothing  to  be  done  except  to 
apologize  and  take  my  leave,  which  I  did  as 
gracefully  as  I  could  under  the  circumstances. 

At  last  I  was  angry  with  Russell.  I  had  been 
puzzled  by  him  often  enough.  This  time  I  was 
filled  with  resentment. 

I  at  once  sought  out  the  law  office  of  Winter- 
mute and  Russell.  The  card,  which  I  had  pre- 
served, gave  me  all  necessary  information  as  to 
its  whereabouts,  and  I  was  not  long  in  finding  it. 
Mr.  Wintermute  was  there.  So  was  Mr.  Russell. 
But  neither  was  the  man  for  whom  I  was  look- 
ing.    Neither  had  ever  heard  of  him. 

I  was  still  left  puzzling  over  these  questions :  — 

Who  is  Russell  ? 

Is  he  after  all  a  liar  ? 

Or  is  he  merely  a  remarkable  coincidence  ? 
***** 

In  June  or  July,  1874,  I  published  the  fore- 
going sketch  in  a  little  monthly  magazine  printed 
in  an  obscure  college  town  in  Illinois,  which  had 


Who  is  Russell?  45 

a  circulation  of  only  a  few  hundred  copies,  and 
lived  just  five  months  in  all. 

It  was  called  the  Midland  Monthly  Magazine, 
and  was  issued  by  a  student  in  the  college  at 
Monmouth,  Illinois. 

Everything  that  related  to  Russell  was  sure 
in  some  way  to  blossom  out  with  all  sorts  of 
strange  coincidences.  This  did  so.  In  spite 
of  the  obscure  way  in  which  my  account  of  the 
man  was  published,  I  had  no  doubt  whatever 
that  it  would  sooner  or  later  result  in  some  new 
revelation  of  or  concerning  him. 

It  did  so,  of  course. 

The  obscure  student's  magazine  somehow 
found  its  way  to  Bordentown,  New  Jersey,  and 
into  the  hands  of  an  editor  there.  The  editor 
was  impressed  by  the  story  and  reprinted  it. 
It  thus  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Reverend 
Lansing  Burroughs,  pastor  of  the  First  Baptist 
Church  of  that  town,  and  late  captain  of  Con- 
federate States  Artillery. 

I  was  not  surprised  when  I  received  from  the 
Reverend  Lansing  Burroughs,  etc.,  the  following 
letter : — 

Bordentown,  N.  J.,  Sept.  5,  1874. 

My  Dear  Sir  :  I  have  just  finished  reading  a  sketch 
published  over  your  name  (copied  from  somewhere,  I  sup- 
pose) in  our  local  paper,  entitled  "Who  is  Russell  ?"  It 
petrifies  me  with  astonishment.  For  thirteen  years  past 
the  question  which  has  bothered  me  most  seriously  has 


46  Who  is  Russell? 

been,  "Who  is  Russell?"  alias  "Wallace,"  alias  "Win- 
termute,"  for  by  all  these  and  some  other  names  have  I 
known  the  mysterious  individual.  If  you  have  been  writ- 
ing only  a  fancy  sketch,  I  must  tackle  one  of  the  strangest 
problems  in  mental  philosophy.  If  your  story  is  one  of 
experience,  then  must  I  see  you  and  compare  notes.  I 
fancy  I  can  horrify  you  with  the  story  of  what  Russell 
once  told  me  had  been  his  history.  .  .  . 
Yours  very  truly, 

Lansing  Burroughs, 
Pastor  of  the  First  Baptist  Church,  Bordentown,  IV.  J. 
Late  captain  Confederate  States  Artillery. 


Now  it  was  just  like  Russell  that  an  account 
of  him,  published  in  a  short-lived  magazine,  of  a 
purely  local  circulation,  out  in  Illinois,  should 
in  some  inscrutable  way  have  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  the  editor  of  a  little  country  paper  in 
New  Jersey  ;  that  this  editor  should  have  copied 
it  into  his  paper;  and  that  one  of  his  readers 
should  happen  to  be  the  one  other  man  in  exist- 
ence who  was  puzzling  over  the  questions  with 
which  the  sketch  ended. 

But  this  was  not  all.  There  was  still  another 
coincidence.  There  was  that  in  my  correspond- 
ent's letter  which  revealed  to  me  a  fact  of  which 
he  was  apparently  unconscious ;  namely,  that 
this  Reverend  Lansing  Burroughs  was  an  old 
college  mate  of  my  own,  whom  I  had  not  seen 
or  heard  from  for  sixteen  years.  Such  a  coin- 
cidence was  altogether  natural  and  proper,  how- 


Who  is  Russell?  47 

ever,  growing  as  it  did  out  of  matters  connected 
with  Russell. 

I  had  some  further  correspondence  with  the 
Reverend  Mr.  Burroughs,  and  finally  we  met  by- 
appointment  and  went  to  Mouquin's  for  lunch- 
eon and  to  compare  notes.  A  careful  analy- 
sis of  dates  proved  beyond  doubt  that  his 
Russell  was  my  Russell.  But  our  experiences 
were  of  a  very  different  sort.  Mr.  Burroughs 
had  never  once  had  a  meeting  with  the  mysteri- 
ous man  which  did  not  bring  calamity  of  some 
sort  upon  himself.  So  far  as  I  was  concerned, 
no  ill  beyond  annoyance  and  embarrassment 
had  ever  come  of  my  acquaintance  with  him. 

The  Reverend  Mr.  Burroughs  declares  to  me 
his  firm  conviction  that  the  quiet,  singularly 
shy,  well-behaved,  modest  gentleman,  so  unusu- 
ally gifted,  especially  in  the  way  of  a  phenome- 
nal genius  for  lying,  is  in  plain  terms  the 
devil. 

As  to  this,  Mr.  Burroughs  is  by  profession 
an  expert,  and  I  am  not.  I  therefore  venture 
no  opinion.  I  merely  continue  to  ask,  "Who 
is  Russell  ?  " 


"JUANITA" 

I  WAS  on  guard  one  night  in  the  autumn  of 
1861. 

It  was  only  ordinary  camp  guard  and  not 
picket  duty. 

We  had  fallen  back  from  the  line  of  Mason's 
and  Munson's  hills,  and  were  camped  well  in 
the  rear  of  Fairfax  Court  House,  which  now 
constituted  our  most  advanced  outpost. 

The  army  were  fortified  at  Centreville.  We 
had  got  tired  of  waiting  for  McClellan  to  make 
the  advance  for  which  we  were  so  eagerly 
ready.  We  were  evidently  preparing  to  go 
into  winter  quarters. 

We  of  Stuart's  cavalry  were  still  posted  six 
or  eight  miles  in  advance  of  the  main  army ; 
but  after  our  summer,  passed  twenty  miles  in 
front,  we  felt  snug  and  comfortable  at  "  Camp 
Cooper." 

Nevertheless,  when  I  saw  three  rockets  — 
red,  white,  and  blue  —  go  up  far  to  the  front,  it 
occurred  to  me  that  the  fact  might  mean  some- 
thing. 

At  any  rate,  I  was  lonely  on  post.  I  had 
48 


" Juanita  "  49 

sung  "  Juanita  "  under  my  breath,  —  and  that  it 
wasn't  permitted  to  sing  out  loud  on  post  was 
probably  a  rule  not  made  with  any  invidious 
reference  to  my  voice,  though  it  might  well  have 
been, —  I  say  I  had  sung  "Juanita"  under  my 
breath  till  I  had  exhausted  the  capabilities  of 
entertainment  that  reside  in  that  tender  musical 
composition. 

So,  for  the  sake  of  diversion,  if  for  nothing 
else,  I  called  out :  "  Corporal  of  the  guard,  post 
number  six." 

When  the  corporal  came  and  I  reported  what 
I  had  seen,  he  moodily  growled  something  about 
there  being  no  orders  to  "  report  on  Yankee 
fireworks."  Nevertheless,  he  communicated 
my  report  to  higher  authority. 

Fifteen  minutes  later  a  hurried  messenger 
came,  summoning  me  at  once  to  General  Stuart's 
headquarters,  half  a  mile  in  front. 

Mounting,  I  rode  at  a  gallop.  That  was  the 
only  gait  which  Stuart  tolerated,  except  in  going 
away  from  the  enemy. 

As  I  rode  out  of  camp  I  heard  "  Boots  and 
Saddles"  sounded  from  all  the  bugles  of  all  the 
regiments. 

I  knew  then  that  "something  was  up." 
"  Boots  and  Saddles  "  always  meant  something 
when  Stuart  gave  the  order. 

When  I  dismounted  at  headquarters,  Stuart 
himself  was    waiting,    although    it   was   three 


50  "Juanita" 

o'clock  in  the  morning.  His  plume  and  golden 
spurs  gleamed  through  the  dark. 

"Tell  me  quick!"  was  all  he  had  to  say.  I 
answered  sententiously :  "  Three  rockets  went 
up  :  red  to  right,  white  to  left,  and  blue  in  the 
middle." 

"  You  mean  our  right  and  left,  or  the  ene- 
my's ?  "  he  asked  eagerly. 

"  Ours,"  I  answered. 

He  turned  quickly  and  gave  hurried  orders 
to  staff-officers,  orderlies,  and  couriers.  Then 
turning  to  me,  he  said  :  "You  ride  with  me."  I 
appreciated  the  attention. 

Five  minutes  later  a  great  column  of  cavalry- 
men were  riding  at  a  gallop  towards  the  front. 
And  just  as  daylight  dawned  we  broke  into  a 
charge  upon  a  heavy  force  of  the  enemy. 

The  hostile  force  was  slowly  advancing,  not 
expecting  us,  and  we  struck  it  in  flank,  taking 
it  completely  by  surprise. 

The  demoralization  of  the  Manassas,  or  Bull 
Run  panic  had  not  even  yet  gone  out  of  the 
Northern  troops.  We  made  short  work  of  their 
advance  and  sent  them  quickly  into  disorderly 
retreat. 

One  of  Stuart's  couriers  was  killed  in  the 
charge.  I  remember,  because  he  rode  beside 
me,  and  his  head  fell  clean  from  his  body,  and 
the  sight  sickened  me,  so  that  I  fought  harder 
for  the  minute  than  I  thought  I  could. 


"Juanita"  51 

As  the  enemy  broke,  Stuart  stopped  his  horse, 
slapped  his  thigh,  and  turning  to  me  laughing, 
and  with  that  indifference  to  rank  which  always 
characterized  him  under  excitement,  exclaimed  : 
"They  haven't  got  over  it  yet,  have  they?" 

The  Manassas  panic  always  did  impress 
Stuart  as  an  irresistible  joke. 

A  moment  later  he  said :  "  I'm  glad  you  re- 
ported those  rockets.  Always  report  whatever 
you  see.  Even  a  shooting  star  may  mean  some- 
thing at  headquarters." 

But  I  have  never  ceased  to  wonder  why  we 
guards  that  night  had  no  orders  to  look  out  for 
red,  white,  and  blue  rockets,  since  they  meant 
so  much.  If  they  had  not  been  reported  by 
a  tired  and  lonely  sentinel,  we  should  have  been 
run  over  in  our  tents  by  a  force  of  ten  thousand 
men. 

A  celebrated  writer  says  :  "  War  is  a  hazard 
of  possibilities,  probabilities,  luck,  and  ill  luck." 

It  was  luck  that  night  that  a  sentry  was  tired 
of  singing  "  Juanita  "  under  his  breath. 


SCRUGGS 

SCRUGGS  lived  throughout  the  war  in  that 
debatable  land  between  the  lines  in  North- 
ern Virginia,  where  it  was  always  a  wonder 
that  anybody  could  live  at  all. 

And  Scruggs  lived  well,  too.  He  was  not 
able  to  work,  because  in  order  to  keep  out  of 
the  army  he  had  found  or  feigned  a  physical 
disability  of  some  kind. 

We  always  knew  that  we  could  get  accurate 
information  concerning  the  enemy  by  going  to 
Scruggs  for  it.  He  frequented  their  camps  as 
freely  as  he  did  ours.  He  kept  his  eyes  open. 
He  always  knew  all  the  important  facts,  and  he 
was  always  eager  to  tell  them. 

When  we  went  after  this  information  Scruggs 
was  sure  to  be  nowhere  visible,  and  none  of  his 
family  could  ever  tell  where  he  might  be.  But 
after  he  had  had  opportunity  to  find  out  with 
certainty  to  which  side  we  belonged,  Scruggs 
would  come  out  of  his  hiding-place,  and  tell  us 
precisely  at  what  points  the  enemy  was  en- 
camped, what  his  strength  was,  and  what  his 
disposition  to  activity  appeared  to  be. 
52 


Scruggs  53 

Then  he  would  tell  us  how  nearly  his  family 
were  starving  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  the 
enemy  had  raided  his  place  and  carried  off  all 
his  supplies.  In  common  gratitude  we  could 
do  nothing  less  than  replenish  his  larder  with 
whatever  we  might  happen  to  possess. 

Scruggs's  information  was  always  accurate, 
always  full,  and  always  scrupulously  truthful. 

When  a  party  of  the  enemy  went  up  to 
Scruggs's  to  inquire  about  us,  Scruggs  pursued 
precisely  the  same  policy.  First  making  sure 
to  which  side  the  party  belonged,  he  would 
come  forth  and  tell  all  that  he  knew  with  re- 
gard to  the  position  and  strength  of  our  posts ; 
he  would  add  that  little  piece  of  misinforma- 
tion,—  most  precious  to  him, — that  we  had 
stripped  him  bare  of  sustenance,  and  they 
would  generously  relieve  his  necessities  again. 

In  all  this  Scruggs  was  scrupulously  truthful, 
except  for  the  little  lie  about  provisions,  and 
it  was  all  absolutely  impartial.  If  such  virtues 
count  for  anything  in  war,  Scruggs  was  entitled 
to  full  credit  for  them. 

But  one  day  our  commander  grew  suspicious 
of  Scruggs.  On  the  same  day  the  commander 
of  the  Federal  outposts  began  also  to  suspect 
Scruggs. 

After  a  little  investigation  our  commandant 
made  up  his  mind  to  hang  Scruggs  for  a  spy. 
About  the  same  time  the  Federal  commandant, 


54  Scruggs 

after  a  like  investigation,  came  to  a  similar  de- 
termination with  regard  to  Scruggs. 

The  two  hanging  parties  met  at  Scruggs's 
house.  As  usual,  Scruggs  was  not  there.  But 
the  two  parties  engaged  each  other  at  once. 
They  were  about  of  equal  numbers,  and  they 
fought  valiantly  for  a  time,  neither  understand- 
ing, of  course,  that  they  were  there  on  precisely 
similar  errands. 

After  a  little  our  party  began  to  doubt  whether 
Scruggs  was  worth  the  contest  or  not,  and  re- 
tired a  little  way.  The  Federals,  with  a  like 
contempt  for  Scruggs,  retired  about  the  same 
distance.  After  a  few  shots  at  long  range  both 
parties  went  back  to  their  camps,  each  com- 
mander feeling  that,  "  After  all,  Scruggs  has 
never  failed  to  give  us  all  the  information  he 
could,  and  has  never  yet  deceived  us  on  a  single 
point." 

After  both  parties  had  gone  Scruggs  came 
out  of  his  hiding-place  and  remarked  to  his 
eldest  daughter :  "  You  see,  Prudence,  what  it  is 
for  a  feller  to  be  always  truthful." 

And,  by  the  way,  Scruggs  never  did  get 
himself  hanged. 


JOE   ON    HORSEBACK 

JOE  was  not  quite  seventeen  years  old. 
He  could  ride  anything  that  happened  to 
possess  a  back.     He  therefore  had  a  great  love 
for  his  horse  —  the  noblest  one  in  the  battery. 

During  the  preliminary  skirmish  in  advance  of 
Pocotaligo,  on  that  terrible  22d  of  October,  1862, 
his  gun  detachment  was  cut  to  pieces  in  a  fearful 
way,  until  he  had  to  work  his  piece  with  three 
men,  serving  as  a  cannoneer  himself.  When 
we  retired  from  the  skirmish  line  at  Yemassee  to 
Pocotaligo  proper,  and  it  was  obvious  that  we 
must  fight  enormous  odds  in  order  to  prevent 
the  enemy  from  crossing  the  causeway  we  were 
defending,  I  suggested  to  Joe  that  he  dismount, 
as  the  rest  of  us  had  done,  and  take  to  a  tree. 

Joe  resented  the  suggestion  with  the  re- 
mark :  "  My  place  is  on  horseback.  I'm  a  ser- 
geant." 

Two  minutes  later  a  cannon-ball  carried  away 
his  horse's  tail.  Five  seconds  afterwards  an- 
other cannon-ball  carried  off  the  beast's  left 
forefoot.  Feeling  that  the  horse  was  sinking 
under  him,  Joe  dismounted  to  see  what  the 
damage  had  been.  As  he  stooped  to  look  at 
55 


56  Joe  on  Horseback 

the  dismembered  foot,  still  another  cannon-ball 
passed  just  over  his  head,  split  his  saddle,  and 
broke  the  poor  animal's  back.  Thereupon  Joe 
turned,  presented  his  pistol  at  the  horse's  head, 
averted  his  eyes  and  fired. 

Then  he  took  a  horse  out  of  the  battery  and 
mounted  him,  remarking:  "I  still  contend  that 
as  a  sergeant  my  place  is  on  horseback." 

The  boy  was  crying,  but  none  of  us  made 
remark  upon  the  incongruity. 

Joe  was  mentioned  in  general  orders  for  his 
gallantry  that  day,  but  the  fact  had  no  reference 
to  this  matter  of  the  horse. 


f.k.Trz*?*^*** 


A   GOOD-BYE  TO  A    FRIEND. 


A    RATHER   BAD    NIGHT 

WE  were  living  in  the  deserted  village. 
That  is  to  say,  our  battery  of  light 
artillery  was  stationed  at  Bluffton,  South  Caro- 
lina. 

At  ordinary  times  Bluffton  had  a  population 
of  about  three  thousand  souls.  At  the  time  of 
which  I  write  it  had  no  population  at  all. 

It  was  a  town  built  upon  a  high  bluff  over- 
looking an  arm  of  the  sea,  or  more  properly  a 
great  bay,  broken  by  multitudinous  islands  into 
various  inlets.  Hilton  Head  lay  within  sight, 
twelve  miles  away,  and  all  the  waters  of  the 
great  island-studded  bay  were  navigable. 

Bluffton  never  had  any  business  to  do.  It 
had  no  shops,  no  factories,  no  anything  but 
planters'  residences.  Its  houses  were  all  ele- 
gant and  all  comfortable.  Its  streets  were 
shaded  by  great  spreading  trees,  not  planted  in 
symmetrical  rows,  but  growing  wherever  they 
pleased,  in  the  midst  of  the  thoroughfares. 

Bluffton  was  exposed  to  the  direct  assault  of 

gun-boats  or  expeditions  of  any  sort.     So,  early 

in  the  war,  its  entire  population  left  and  went  to 

points  in  the  interior.     At  the  time  I  write  of, 

37 


58  A  Rather  Bad  Night 

in  1863,  there  was  not  a  soul  in  the  town  except 
the  men  of  the  battery  to  which  I  belonged. 

Our  captain  was  commandant  of  outposts.  I 
was  adjutant  of  the  same. 

Our  support  consisted  of  two  or  three  small 
troops  of  cavalry.  Their  camps  were  several 
miles  in  rear  of  our  own.  These  cavalrymen 
did  all  the  picketing.  In  the  event  of  an  attack 
we  and  they  were  charged  with  the  duty  of 
harassing  the  advance  of  the  enemy  and  delay- 
ing him  on  his  march  to  the  railroad,  seventeen 
miles  away,  long  enough  for  troops  to  be  sent 
down  from  Charleston  or  up  from  Savannah. 

It  was  a  wild,  free,  gypsy-like  life.  We  lived 
in  the  handsomely  furnished  houses,  made  free 
use  of  the  very  rich  libraries,  fished,  played  at 
chess,  shot  deer  and  turkeys  in  the  woods,  dozed 
upon  "joggling  boards"  in  sea-breeze-swept 
piazzas,  and  altogether  did  nothing  most  indus- 
triously and  delightfully. 

There  was  one  duty  to  be  done,  and  that  a 
very  important  one.  It  was  necessary  for  some 
officer  to  make  the  grand  rounds  of  the  pickets 
every  night.  This  task  devolved  upon  me  about 
once  a  week.  The  pickets  were  stationed  at  all 
available  points  of  observation  below,  all  points 
from  which  the  channels  could  be  seen.  To 
visit  them  required  an  all  night's  ride,  which  in 
that  country  is  by  no  means  an  agreeable  un- 
dertaking. 


A  Rather  Bad  Night  59 

The  weeds  rise  above  the  head  of  a  horseman, 
and  the  dew  drips  as  rain  might,  from  every  leaf. 
The  night  rider  becomes  water  soaked  and  chilled 
to  the  very  bones,  even  during  the  fierce  summer 
weather.  During  the  autumn  and  winter  a 
night  ride  on  this  subtropical  coast  brings  with 
it  a  degree  of  suffering  from  cold  which  the 
fiercest  Northern  winter  never  produces. 

But  it  was  absolutely  necessary  to  visit  the 
picket  posts.  Upon  their  efficiency  depended 
our  safety  and  that  of  the  railroad  we  were  set  to 
defend.  If  a  single  picket  slept,  a  fleet  of  gun- 
boats or  ship's  launches  might  come  to  Bluffton 
wholly  unannounced.  The  battery,  without 
support  at  hand,  would  fall  helpless  into  the 
enemy's  hands,  and  the  railroad  communication, 
on  which  the  safety  of  Charleston  and  Savan- 
nah depended,  would  be  broken. 

It  was  Christmas  Eve,  crisp  and  cool.  A 
heap  of  fat  hard  pine  was  blazing  in  the  great 
fireplace  in  our  quarters.  The  negro  servant 
was  busy  in  the  kitchen  without.  Our  guests, 
half  a  dozen  officers  from  the  cavalry  companies, 
were  already  assembled.  We  had  invited  them 
to  dine  with  us  upon  a  haunch  of  venison,  a 
wild  turkey,  fish,  oysters,  crabs,  shrimps,  etc., 
all  of  which,  except  the  first  two,  could  be 
taken  at  any  time  within  a  hundred  yards  of 
the  door.  Our  little  party-giving  promised  to 
be  a  thoroughly  successful  bit  of  hospitality. 


6o  A  Rather  Bad  NiorJit 


& 


Curry,  the  cook,  had  just  begun  to  put  the 
dinner  on  the  table  when  a  messenger  came  to 
report  that  Lieutenant  C ,  the  officer  ap- 
pointed to  make  the  picket  rounds  that  night, 
was  ill  and  could  not  go.  It  was  my  turn  next 
and  there  was  no  escape.  At  the  holiday  season 
pickets  especially  need  watching.  I  knew  very 
well  it  would  never  do  to  leave  them  unvisited 
that  night.  There  was  nothing  for  it,  therefore, 
but  to  turn  the  guests  over  to  my  messmate, 
the  captain,  and  order  my  horse. 

My  guide  —  for  without  a  guide  no  one  could 
possibly  find  his  way  at  night  through  parts  of 
that  country  —  was  a  dull,  taciturn  fellow,  with 
whom  I  found  it  impossible  to  maintain  a  con- 
versation. My  twelve  miles'  ride  to  the  farthest 
picket  post,  which  I  visited  first,  was  therefore 
a  very  disagreeable  substitute  for  the  jovial, 
social  evening  I  had  planned. 

By  the  time  I  had  reached  Bear's  Island,  I 
was  wet  to  the  skin  with  dew  and  stiff  with  cold. 
It  was  about  ten  o'clock  when  we  rode  across 
the  causeway  from  the  mainland  to  the  island, 
and  the  first  thing  I  observed  was  the  utter 
darkness  of  the  place.  Ordinarily  the  pickets 
on  this  post  kept  up  a  little  fire  behind  a  screen 
at  which  to  warm  and  dry  themselves  during  the 
night.  Approaching  from  the  rear,  I  always 
saw  this  fire  when  I  crossed  the  causeway,  the 
screen  standing  between  it  and  the  water  on  the 


A  Rather  Bad  Night  61 

other  side.  To-night,  however,  everything  was 
dark,  and  it  was  with  some  little  difficulty  that 
we  found  our  way  across  the  island  to  the  picket 
post. 

"What's  the  matter,  sergeant?"  I  asked. 
"Where's  your  fire  to-night?" 

"  I  had  to  put  it  out  and  move  away  from 
it,"  he  replied.  "  They  are  loading  up  two  gun- 
boats and  three  transports  just  across  the  creek 
there,  and  they  threw  two  or  three  charges  of 
grape-shot  over  here  an  hour  or  two  ago.  They 
killed  one  of  my  men,  poor  fellow.  I've  been 
watching  them  and  was  on  the  point  of  sending 
a  man  up  with  the  alarm.  I'm  glad  you've  come 
to  take  the  responsibility  off  my  shoulders." 

By  this  time  I  had  brought  my  glass  to  bear 
upon  the  pier  upon  the  other  side  of  the  inlet, 
or  creek,  as  it  is  commonly  called,  and  saw  that 
the  sergeant  was  right.  Three  transports  were 
rapidly  receiving  troops,  cavalry,  artillery,  and 
infantry,  while  two  rather  formidable  looking 
gun-boats  were  sullenly  steaming  up  and  down 
in  front. 

The  inlet  was  nearly  a  mile  wide,  and  as  the 
enemy  showed  few  lights  and  dim  ones,  the  ser- 
geant without  a  glass  had  not  been  able  to  dis- 
cover the  number  of  troops  taken  on  board.  I 
soon  made  out  that  at  least  five  field  batteries 
had  been  shipped,  and  that  the  transports  were 
almost  full  of  troops,  while  a  battalion  of  infan- 


62  A  Rather  Bad  Night 

try,  a  squadron  of  cavalry,  and  two  batteries  re- 
mained on  shore,  apparently  waiting  for  those 
on  board  to  be  so  disposed  as  to  afford  room  for 
them. 

I  rapidly  weighed  all  the  probabilities  in  my 
mind.  There  were  two  and  only  two  possible 
purposes  in  this  embarkation  of  troops.  It  was 
a  formidable  expedition  against  the  railroad,  via 
Bluffton,  or  else  it  was  merely  a  removal  of  troops 
from  one  point  on  the  coast  to  another.  If  the 
first  were  the  object,  the  vessels  would  steam  up 
the  inlet ;  if  the  other,  they  would  put  to  sea. 

But  if  it  were  merely  a  transfer  of  troops, 
why  were  the  transports  crowded  in  this  way, 
and  why  were  the  convoying  gun-boats  there  ? 
There  was  no  enemy  off  the  coast,  except 
storms ;  and  as  storms  were  conspicuously  dis- 
regarded in  the  overloading  of  the  steamers, 
it  seemed  to  me  clear  that  the  expedition  was 
bound  for  Bluffton. 

"  How  many  men  have  you,  sergeant  ? "  I 
asked. 

"Two,"  he  replied. 

"Trusty  fellows  ? " 

"  As  good  as  ever  threw  a  leg  over  a  saddle." 

"Send  them  to  me,"  I  said. 

When  they  came,  I  asked  :  "  Are  your  horses 
good  ones  ? " 

"  Pretty  good." 


A  Rather  Bad  Night  63 

"  Mount,  then,"  I  said  to  one,  "  and  ride  as 
fast  as  you  can  to  Buckingham  Ferry.  Wait 
with  the  pickets  there  till  the  fleet  comes  with- 
in sight.  Then  send  a  man  to  Bluffton  to  an- 
nounce the  fact.  Stay  yourself  till  the  fleet 
has  passed,  observing  which  creek  it  takes. 
As  soon  as  you  satisfy  yourself  on  that  point, 
ride  to  Bluffton  and  report." 

Then  turning  to  the  other,  I  said :  "  You  go 
to  Hunting  Island  and  do  the  same  thing.  Tell 
the  sergeants  there  to  follow  their  standing  or- 
ders in  all  other  regards.  Be  quick,  now,  both 
of  you.  I'll  expect  you  at  Bluffton  at  the  right 
time." 

As  the  men  galloped  away,  I  walked  to  the 
place  where  the  sergeant  was  still  standing, 
and  said  :  "  Sergeant,  you  and  I  will  stay  here 
till  the  fleet  leaves.  Then  we'll  ride  straight 
to  Bluffton  on  a  full  run  and  give  the  alarm  in 
time." 

"It's  already  leaving,"  he  replied.  "And 
look !  it's  steaming  straight  up  the  creek." 

Looking,  I  saw  that  it  was  as  he  said.  The 
two  gun-boats  abreast  led  the  column,  the  three 
transports  following. 

"  It's  time  for  us  to  be  riding,  then,"  I  said, 
hastily  springing  into  my  saddle.  "  But  we 
can  beat  them  by  two  hours,  as  the  creek  is 
crooked  and  they  must  sound  all  the  way  for 
want  of  buoys." 


64  A  Rather  Bad  Night 

We  galloped  across  the  island ;  but  when  we 
came  to  the  little  creek  we  found  an  unexpected 
obstacle  in  our  way.  The  tide  had  risen  well- 
nigh  to  the  flood,  and  was  exceedingly  high  in 
consequence  of  a  strong  wind  that  had  been 
blowing  on  shore  all  day.  The  strip  of  marsh 
which  separated  the  island  from  the  mainland 
was  completely  covered  with  water,  and  even  the 
causeway  leading  across  it  was  submerged.  The 
two  men  sent  to  alarm  the  pickets  had  reached 
the  place  only  a  little  while  earlier  than  we. 
We  found  them  hunting  for  some  landmark  or 
other  by  which  to  find  out  where  the  causeway 
lay. 

The  sergeant  thought  he  knew  its  locality 
and  direction.  He  boldly  plunged  in.  The 
rest  of  us  followed. 

Just  what  we  did,  or  where  we  went,  or  how 
it  all  happened,  none  of  us  ever  knew.  But  we 
rode  off  the  submerged  track,  about  midway 
the  stream,  and  found  ourselves  floundering  in 
the  water,  some  of  us  on  our  horses,  and  some 
of  us  under  them.  It  was  the  darkest  night  I 
ever  knew.  Once  in  the  water  we  could  see  no 
shore  anywhere.  Naturally,  each  took  the  di- 
rection in  which  he  thought  the  desired  bank 
lay.  And  it  seemed  that  no  two  of  us  agreed 
in  our  views  on  this  point  except  by  accident. 

My  horse  swam  pretty  well  and  finally  made 
the  edge  of  the  water.     But  the  bottom  was  a 


A  Rather  Bad  Night  65 

quagmire,  and  sinking  in  it  he  could  not  extri- 
cate himself.  To  relieve  him  I  slipped  off  his 
back  and  into  the  water,  but  it  proved  too  late. 
With  every  frantic  struggle  the  poor  beast  sank 
deeper,  and  wrthin  a  minute  he  lay  lifeless  in 
the  water,  half  buried  in  the  mud  of  the  bottom. 

My  own  situation  was  a  perilous  one.  My 
feet  sank  at  once  in  the  slimy  ooze.  To  save 
myself  I  threw  my  body  forwards.  Succeeding 
in  freeing  my  feet,  I  swam  until  the  water  was 
too  shallow  for  swimming.  After  that,  by  crawl- 
ing on  my  belly,  I  managed  to  avoid  sinking 
and  smothering  in  the  mud. 

It  was  half  an  hour,  however,  before  I  stood 
upon  firm  ground  again,  and  then  I  did  not 
know  which  side  of  the  marsh  I  had  reached. 

I  was  covered  with  slime,  stiff  with  cold,  and 
utterly  exhausted  by  my  exertions.  Of  myself, 
however,  I  thought  little.  I  was  anxious  only 
about  the  sleeping  battery  at  Bluffton.  If  the 
alarm  were  not  given,  —  and  unless  some  one  or 
other  of  our  party  had  succeeded  in  getting 
across  with  his  horse,  it  could  not  be,  —  Bluff- 
ton  would  be  taken  completely  by  surprise. 
The  battery  would  be  captured.  A  rapid  march 
would  take  the  enemy  to  the  railroad,  either  at 
Grahamville  or  at  Hardeeville,  before  any  force 
could  be  sent  to  oppose.  Our  defence  of  an 
essential  line  of  communication  would  fail. 
Even  if  the  two  men  from  the  picket  post  had 


66  A  Rather  Bad  Night 


cV 


got  out  on  the  other  side,  they  would  go  not  to 
Bluffton,  but  to  Buckingham  Ferry  and  Hunting 
Island,  as  I  had  ordered.  It  was  not  at  all  cer- 
tain that  the  fleet  would  pass  either  of  those 
points.  It  could  sail  up  other  creeks  quite  as 
easily,  particularly  on  such  a  tide  as  that. 

With  these  thoughts  in  my  mind  I  felt  the 
need  of  bestirring  myself.  I  was  not  long  in  dis- 
covering that  we  were  still  on  the  island,  and  not 
on  the  mainland.  Following  the  margin  of  the 
water,  I  presently  came  to  the  two  men  who  had 
been  with  the  sergeant  on  picket.  One  of  them 
was  stuck  in  the  mud,  and  the  other  was  trying 
to  draw  him  out  with  a  pole.  Both  of  them  had 
lost  their  horses.  The  sergeant  and  my  guide 
had  escaped  with  their  steeds,  and  I  found  both  of 
them  on  the  island,  a  little  further  up  the  shore. 

The  guide  was  utterly  demoralized  with  fright, 
or  cold,  or  both.  So  I  took  his  horse  and 
ordered  him  to  wait  on  the  island  till  morning, 
and  then  to  make  his  way  to  whatever  point  he 
should  find  it  easiest  to  reach.  The  sergeant 
and  I  determined  to  make  another  effort  to  get 
to  Bluffton  and  give  the  alarm. 

"  Run  back  to  the  other  side  of  the  island," 
said  he  to  one  of  his  men,  "  and  see  if  the  fleet 
is  still  in  sight  and  what  it  is  doing.  We  must 
let  our  horses  blow  a  little,  and  you  can  get 
back  by  the  time  we  are  ready  to  start." 

The  man  went,  and  his  comrade,  having  noth- 


A  Rather  Bad  Night  67 

ing  better  to  do,  went  with  him.  Presently  one 
of  them  returned,  bringing  the  news  that  the 
fleet  was  making  its  way  up  a  narrow  creek 
from  which,  as  we  knew,  neither  the  Bucking- 
ham Ferry  nor  the  Hunting  Island  picket  could 
see  it.  As  those  were  the  only  posts  from 
which  after  seeing  it  a  man  could  get  to  Bluff- 
ton  in  time  to  give  the  alarm,  the  sergeant 
and  I  were  more  than  ever  determined  to  make 
our  way  thither  at  all  hazards.  Luckily  the 
road  from  Bear's  Island  to  Bluffton  was  the  easi- 
est one  in  all  that  country  to  find,  and  the  one 
I  happened  to  know  best.  So  that  even  if  the 
sergeant  should  not  get  across  the  marsh,  I  was 
confident  of  my  ability  to  make  the  journey 
alone. 

"  Now,"  said  the  sergeant,  "  if  I  get  across  I 
won't  wait  for  you,  but  will  go  right  on ;  if  you 
succeed,  don't  wait  for  me.  It's  no  time  for 
ceremony.  It's  better  one  of  us  should  drown 
than  that  the  other  should  be  delayed." 

"  Spoken  like  a  man  and  a  soldier,  sergeant," 
said  I.  "  Now  for  it."  And  with  that  we  again 
essayed  to  follow  the  submerged  track.  About 
midway  the  sergeant's  horse  went  down  as  be- 
fore; and  just  as  I  was  about  to  call  out  some- 
thing encouraging  to  him  the  guide's  horse, 
which  I  was  riding,  plunged  headforemost  into 
the  salt  water,  throwing  me  completely  over  his 
head. 


68  A  Rather  Bad  Night 

For  a  moment  I  was  senseless  from  a  blow 
received  either  from  the  hoof  of  the  sergeant's 
horse,  or  by  falling  against  one  of  the  timbers 
of  the  causeway.  When  I  came  to  myself  I  was 
clinging  to  the  tail  of  the  sergeant's  horse,  while 
the  sergeant,  as  I  presently  discovered,  was  hold- 
ing by  one  of  the  stirrups. 

How  long  we  remained  in  the  water,  I  do  not 
know,  but  it  must  have  been  nearly  an  hour. 
The  poor  horse  swam  around  in  a  purposeless 
way,  not  knowing  where  to  go,  until  finally  he 
sank  exhausted  beneath  the  tide.  Cool  as  the 
night  was  the  salt  water  was  tepid  as  it  always 
is  on  that  coast.  Otherwise  I  should  not  now 
be  alive  to  tell  of  that  Christmas  Eve. 

We  got  out  at  last  and  found  ourselves  on 
the  island  again.  Despairing  now  —  for  with- 
out horses  it  was  simply  impossible  to  get  to 
Bluffton  until  long  after  the  time  when  our  com- 
ing would  be  of  any  use  —  we  trudged  doggedly 
across  the  island,  that  we  might  wait  and  listen 
at  the  water's  edge  for  the  booming  of  the 
cannon. 

Two  more  utterly  wretched  young  men  no 
Christmas  morning  ever  dawned  upon. 

"  See  there,"  said  the  sergeant,  halting  sud- 
denly. "There's  the  fleet,  and  bless  my  soul 
it's  putting  to  sea." 

It  was  true  enough.  No  attack  was  to  be 
made  after  all.     We  had  spent  the  night  drown- 


A  Rather  Bad  Night  69 

ing  horses,  and  nearly  drowning  ourselves  for 
nothing. 

Why  the  fleet  had  steamed  several  miles  up 
the  creek  before  putting  to  sea,  I  have  never 
been  able  to  guess.  But  I  vividly  remember 
that  its  prank  subjected  me  to  a  twelve  miles' 
walk  that  morning,  and  compelled  me  to  sub- 
stitute quinine  and  dogwood-root-bark  bitters 
that  day  for  the  Christmas  dinner  I  had 
planned. 


THE    WOMEN    OF    PETERSBURG 

WE  went  into  Petersburg  in  June,  1864, 
with  the  horses  at  a  brisk  trot,  and  the 
men  on  foot  at  a  double  quick. 

The  enemy's  battalions  were  already  at  the 
other  end  of  Sycamore  Street,  and  it  was  our 
task  to  drive  them  back  before  they  should  be 
reinforced. 

Nevertheless  those  good  women  of  Petersburg 
ministered  to  us.  They  knew  that  we  had  been 
marching  all  night  and  that  we  were  in  a  fam- 
ishing condition.  They  knew  also  that  we  must 
not  waste  a  moment  if  Petersburg,  the  key  to 
Richmond,  was  not  to  be  lost. 

So  they  formed  themselves  in  platoons  —  God 
bless  them  !  —  bearing  gifts  of  sandwiches  and 
coffee. 

We  could  not  stop  even  to  take,  much  less  to 
eat,  the  food  they  offered,  so  they  thrust  their 
platoons  between  ours  and  marched  backward 
as  fast  as  we  marched  forward,  serving  their 
food  and  drink  to  us  as  we  went. 

Every  now  and  then  a  Federal  shell  would 
come  bowling  down  the  street,  but  these  alert 
women  would  jump  it  as  nimbly  as  if  its  passage 
70 


The  Women  of  Petersburg  71 

had  been  a  prearranged  figure  in  the  dance. 
Not  one  of  them  showed  the  slightest  fear. 
Not  one  of  them  faltered  for  a  moment  in  her 
ministrations  in  consideration  of  herself.  There 
was  not  one  of  them,  I  think,  who  would  not 
have  gone  with  us  into  the  crash  of  the  battle 
itself  ;  but  by  the  time  we  had  refreshed  our- 
selves a  little,  we  were  so  near  to  the  aggressive 
enemy's  lines,  that  we  cried  aloud  with  one 
voice  the  order  for  the  womenkind  to  go  back. 

A  minute  later  we  were  in  the  thick  of  the 
struggle  for  Petersburg.  The  enemy  was  not 
in  such  force  as  we  had  supposed,  and  we  had 
fortunately  arrived  some  hours  in  advance  of 
General  Grant's  ponderous  divisions.  After  fif- 
teen minutes  of  hard  fighting  the  enemy  retired 
beyond  the  Jerusalem  turnpike  and  we  spent 
the  night  in  beginning  that  thin  line  of  earth- 
works which  was  destined  for  eight  months  to 
come  to  hold  at  bay  a  force  two  or  three  times 
as  strong  in  numbers  as  our  own. 

At  any  hour  during  all  that  eight  months  the 
Federal  forces  could  have  broken  through  our 
lines  at  any  point  they  pleased,  if  they  had 
been  resolute. 

Anybody  who  will  look  at  the  old  works  to- 
day, as  I  have  recently  done,  and  consider  the 
facts  dispassionately,  can  see  this  clearly  for 
himself.  Our  enemies  had  behind  them,  and 
running   parallel  with  their  lines,  a  system  of 


72  The  Women  of  Petersburg 

roads  that  was  out  of  our  sight.  They  had  re- 
sources practically  illimitable.  They  had  in  front 
of  them  an  attenuated  line  of  men,  stretched 
out  for  twenty  miles,  and  without  the  possibility 
of  reinforcement  from  any  source.  They  could 
have  concentrated  any  force  they  pleased  at 
any  point  they  pleased  and  at  any  time  they 
pleased,  without  the  possibility  of  our  discover- 
ing what  they  were  doing.  They  could  have 
made  an  irresistible  attack  upon  any  point  of 
our  line  at  will.  They  did  not  do  it.  And  so 
the  fight  went  on. 

During  all  those  weary  months  the  good 
women  of  Petersburg  went  about  their  house- 
hold affairs  with  fifteen-inch  shells  dropping 
occasionally  into  their  boudoirs  or  uncomfort- 
ably near  to  their  kitchen  ranges.  Yet  they 
paid  no  attention  to  any  danger  that  threatened 
themselves. 

Their  deeds  of  mercy  will  never  be  ade- 
quately recorded  until  the  angels  report.  But 
this  much  I  want  to  say  of  them  —  they  were 
"war  women"  of  the  most  daring  and  devoted 
type.  When  there  was  need  of  their  ministra- 
tions on  the  line,  they  were  sure  to  be  promptly 
there ;  and  once,  as  I  have  recorded  elsewhere 
in  print,  a  bevy  of  them  came  out  to  the  lines 
only  to  encourage  us,  and,  under  a  fearful  fire, 
sang  Bayard  Taylor's  "  Song  of  the  Camp," 
giving  us  as  an  encore  the  lines :  — 


The  Women  of  Petersburg  73 

"  Ah,  soldiers,  to  your  honored  rest, 
Your  truth  and  valor  bearing, 
The  bravest  are  the  tenderest, 
The  loving  are  the  daring." 

With  inspiration  such  as  these  women  gave 
us,  it  was  no  wonder  that,  as  I  heard  General 
Sherman  say  soon  after  the  war :  "  It  took  us 
four  years,  with  all  our  enormous  superiority  in 
resources,  to  overcome  the  stubborn  resistance 
of  those  men." 


HAM   SEAY 

HAM  SEAY  had  a  haemorrhage  that  morn- 
ing—  a    haemorrhage   from    the   lungs. 

But  Ham  Seay  had  the  fastest  horse  in  the 
company,  and  he  knew  how  to  ride  a  horse  for 
all  that  was  in  him  of  achievement. 

When  the  news  came  that  Stuart  wanted  to 
communicate  as  quickly  as  possible  with  the 
commandant  at  Fredericksburg,  Ham  Seay  vol- 
unteered to  carry  the  message. 

"  But  you're  ill,"  said  Stuart. 

"That  doesn't  matter,"  said  Ham.  "I  can 
ride  my  horse,  and  my  horse  is  a  good  one." 

"But  you're  ill,"  said  Stuart  again.  "And 
I  don't  want  to  send  an  ill  man  on  such  a 
journey  as  this." 

Then  Ham  Seay  rose  in  the  majesty  of  his 
manhood. 

"General,"  he  said,  "I  am  a  doomed  man. 
I  cannot  live  long  to  render  service  in  the  war. 
I  want  to  render  what  service  I  can.  I  want  to 
carry  this  message.  It  will  do  me  no  harm. 
It  will  not  shorten  the  few  days  I  have  yet  to 
live.  It  will  make  my  life  worth  something." 
74 


Ham  Seay  75 

So  Stuart  gave  him  the  message  to  a  general 
fifty  miles  away. 

Ham  Seay  mounted,  and  said  to  his  com- 
rades :  "  Good-by,  boys.  I  may  never  see  you 
again;  but  I'll  do  this  errand  all  right,  or  die 
trying." 

He  rode  his  horse  with  urgency,  but  with 
discretion.  He  had  but  one  object  in  view,  and 
that  was  to  get  the  message  to  its  destination 
in  the  briefest  possible  number  of  hours. 

He  delivered  his  communication.  He  died 
half  an  hour  afterwards.  His  horse  had  died 
before  Ham  did.     But  both  had  done  their  duty. 


OLD   JONES'S    DASH 

OLD  Jones  was  a  queer  character. 
He  was  also  a  queer  figure.  He  never 
had  a  uniform.  He  wore  a  yellow  coat  and  a 
pair  of  light  blue  trousers.  He  wore  a  pot  hat 
of  the  fashion,  I  should  say  at  a  guess,  of  the 
year  1812. 

He  was  a  graduate  of  West  Point,  but  he 
had  resigned  from  the  army  twelve  years  be- 
fore the  war  began,  and  therefore  was  not 
entitled  to  what  they  called  "relative  rank." 

He  was  a  cynic  and  a  misanthrope.  He  was 
still  more  pronouncedly  a  misogynist.  He  did 
not  believe  in  men.  He  positively  disbelieved 
in  women.  He  was  ready  at  any  time  to 
affront  a  man  and  to  treat  a  woman  with  con- 
spicuous contempt.  He  hated  life,  and  was 
ready  to  give  it  up  at  any  moment  which  might 
suit  the  decrees  or  the  aspirations  of  Fate.  He 
was  ready  to  fight  anything  in  the  world,  or  any- 
body, under  any  circumstances,  or  upon  any 
issue. 

That  is  why  he  got  himself  cashiered  toward 
the  end  of  the  war. 

But  we  are  dealing  with  the  beginning  of  the 
76 


Old  Jones  s  Dash  77 

war.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war  he  organ- 
ized a  company  of  cavalry  and  got  himself 
elected  its  captain.  In  the  regular  order  of 
promotion  he  soon  came  to  be  colonel  of  the 
regiment.  It  was  at  this  time  that  the  events 
recorded  in  the  present  story  occurred. 

When  McClellan  took  command  of  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac,  after  the  stampede  at  Manas- 
sas, it  was  under  the  demoralization  of  the  fear- 
ful panic.  It  was  a  part  of  McClellan's  program 
to  send  his  men  out  on  expeditions  of  attack  in 
order  to  accustom  them  to  the  idea  of  standing 
fire.  As  the  end  of  the  summer  of  1861  drew 
near,  he  had  begun,  seriously,  to  threaten  our 
position  at  Centreville. 

He  would  send  out  men  in  considerable  force 
and  compel  us  to  meet  them  with  serious  intent. 
Usually  Stuart  was  able  very  quickly  to  dis- 
cover the  sham  character  of  these  advances. 
But  once  in  a  while  they  were  so  well  dis- 
guised as  to  be  mistaken  for  serious  attacks. 

One  day  in  the  autumn  the  greatest  of  all 
these  advances  began.  The  enemy  came  for- 
ward with  every  possible  appearance  of  intend- 
ing an  assault  on  the  Confederate  position  at 
Centreville. 

There  were  cavalry,  infantry,  and  artillery  in 
the  column ;  and  when  they  reached  our  picket 
lines  there  was  every  appearance  of  serious 
conflict  in  prospect, 


y8  Old  Jones  s  Dash 

As  we  sat  there  on  our  horses  in  front  of  the 
line,  Stuart  came  along  and  said  to  Colonel 
Jones :  "  Colonel,  I  wish  you'd  take  a  dozen 
or  twenty  men,  get  into  the  rear  of  that  force, 
and  find  out  how  much  it  means." 

Jones  detailed  the  requisite  number  of  us 
from  the  right  of  our  company,  with  Captain 
Irving  in  command  of  them.  By  riding  three 
or  four  miles  to  the  right,  we  were  able  to  get 
in  rear  of  the  Federal  force.  We  soon  found 
that  there  was  no  baggage  train,  no  commissary 
train,  no  quartermaster's  train,  and  no  ammuni- 
tion train  —  in  short,  that  the  advance  was  not 
intended  as  a  serious  attack. 

By  the  time  that  we  had  found  out  all  this, 
we  were  within  fifty  yards  of  the  rear  of  the 
Federal  lines,  and  almost  immediately  opposite 
the  point  where  we  had  left  our  own  command. 
We  were  pretty  well  hidden  by  the  underbrush 
of  the  woods,  as  we  stood  there  and  looked. 

Presently  old  Jones  turned  to  Charlie  Irving 
and  said :  "  The  whole  thing's  an  egg-shell, 
isn't  it  ? " 

"Yes,"  said  Charlie;  "an  egg-shell  easily 
crushed." 

Jones  thought  a  moment,  and  then  said,  with 
his  nasal  drawl :  "  I  wish  I  could  communicate 
with  Stuart.  I'd  break  through  that  line  and 
save  the  trouble  of  the  ride  around." 

The  young  captain's  eyes  snapped  with  that 


Old  Jones  s  Dash  79 

peculiar  sense  of  humor  and  that  daring  which 
were  his  principal  characteristics,  as  he  said : 
"  Why  not  break  through  anyhow,  colonel  ? 
Don't  you  think  Stuart  would  understand  ?  I've 
never  found  him  slow  in  getting  to  windward 
of  things." 

"Well,  if  you  say  so,  captain,  I  guess  we'll 
do  it.  It'll  save  the  horses,  anyhow.  Attention, 
men  !  "  with  a  slow  drawl.  "  Draw  —  sabres  ! 
Forward  —  march  !  Trot  —  march  !  Gallop  — 
march  !     Charge  !  " 

We  went  through  that  egg-shell  with  an  en- 
thusiasm which  was  not  a  reflection  of  the 
drawling  commands  of  our  colonel. 

Captain  Irving  was  right :  Stuart  was  not 
slow  in  getting  to  windward  of  things.  He 
ordered  a  charge  and  doubled  up  that  column 
like  a  telescope. 


A   WOMAN'S    HAIR 

AFTER  the  battle  of  Manassas  or  Bull  Run, 
fought  July  21,  1 86 1,  Stuart  made  his 
headquarters  in  the  neighborhood  of  Fairfax 
Court  House,  with  pickets  at  Falls  Church, 
Vienna,  and  other  points  ten  miles  or  so  to  the 
front. 

Suddenly,  with  a  strong  force,  he  occupied 
Mason's  and  Munson's  hills,  almost  under  the 
guns  of  the  Washington  fortifications,  and  very 
much  farther  in  advance  than  outposts  gener- 
ally are. 

It  has  since  been  a  puzzle  to  many  military 
critics  to  guess  why  he  did  this  unusual  thing. 
Perhaps  this  story  may  throw  some  light  on  the 
problem. 

Our  company  was  on  picket  at  Falls  Church. 
Half  a  dozen  of  us  kept  watch  at  the  edge  of 
the  woods  on  the  top  of  the  hill,  while  the  rest 
of  the  boys  took  their  ease  in  rear. 

It  was  in  that  early  stage  of  the  war  when  to 
shoot  at  men  seemed  to  many  civilians  a  species 
of  sport  —  a  sort  of  pursuit  of  big  game. 

This  Falls  Church  post  was  a  favorite  rendez- 
vous for  this  species  of  sportsmen  from  Wash- 
80 


A    Woman's  Hair  81 

ington.  Our  position  was  an  exposed  one.  Men 
not  in  the  army,  and  even  women,  liked  to  ride 
out  from  Washington,  crouch  behind  a  pile  of 
logs,  and  "take  a  crack"  at  the  rebels. 

Now  and  then  they  made  a  widow  and  some 
orphans,  and  since  this  was  merely  a  matter  of 
diversion  and  entertainment  for  them,  with  no 
other  principle  involved,  it  seemed  almost  too 
bad. 

Finally  Charlie  Irving  got  "tired,"  as  he  put 
it,  of  "playing  partridge  for  those  people  to 
shoot  at."  Charlie  Irving  was  our  captain.  He 
was  a  man  who  never  said  much,  but  always 
meant  a  good  deal. 

The  next  morning  he  made  the  detail  for 
post  duty  at  the  front  upon  a  new  principle. 
We  had  been  nine  days  on  picket,  and  it  had 
been  his  custom  to  detail  the  men  for  post  duty 
in  front  in  alphabetical  order.  This  morning 
he  selected  us  without  reference  to  our  "turns," 
and  with  sole  reference  to  the  speed  and  endur- 
ance of  our  horses. 

"  Now,  boys,"  he  said,  with  that  easy  familiar- 
ity which  made  us  call  him  "  Charlie,"  because 
we  had  all  gone  hunting  together  as  comrades 
before  the  war ;  "  now,  boys,  we're  going  to  cap- 
ture that  picket  post  to-day,  and  if  I  find  a 
civilian  among  them,  I'm  going  to  hang  him  to 
that  chestnut  tree  for  murder." 

We  knew  that  he  would  do  what  he  said,  and 


82  A    Woman  s  Hair 

we  were  all  in  hearty  sympathy  with  his  pur- 
pose. 

About  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  sharp- 
shooting  began.  Our  captain  instantly  divided 
us  into  two  squads,  and  without  military  formali- 
ties said  :  "  Now,  boys,  ride  to  the  right  and  left 
and  corner  'em." 

That  was  the  only  command  we  received,  but 
we  obeyed  it  with  a  will.  The  two  sharp-shoot- 
ing citizens  who  were  there  that  morning  es- 
caped on  good  horses,  but  we  captured  the 
pickets. 

Among  them  was  a  woman  —  a  Juno  in  ap- 
pearance, with  a  wealth  of  raven  black  hair 
twisted  carelessly  into  a  loose  knot  under  the 
jockey  cap  she  wore. 

She  was  mounted  on  a  superb  chestnut  mare, 
and  she  knew  how  to  ride. 

She  might  easily  have  escaped,  and  at  one 
time  seemed  about  to  do  so,  but  at  the  critical 
moment  she  seemed  to  lose  her  head  and  so  fell 
into  our  hands. 

When  we  brought  her  to  Charlie  Irving  she 
was  all  smiles  and  graciousness,  and  Charlie 
was  all  blushes. 

"  You'd  hang  me  to  a  tree,  if  I  were  a  man, 
I  suppose,"  she  said.  "  And  serve  me  right, 
too.  As  I'm  only  a  woman,  you'd  better  send 
me  to  General  Stuart,  instead." 

This  seemed  so  obviously  the  right  way  out 


A    Woman  s  Hair  83 

of  it  that  Charlie  ordered  Ham  Seay  and  me  to 
escort  her  to  Stuart's  headquarters,  which  were 
under  a  tree  some  miles  in  the  rear. 

When  we  got  there  Stuart  seemed  to  recog- 
nize the  young  woman.  Or  perhaps  it  was  only 
his  habitual  and  constitutional  gallantry  that 
made  him  come  forward  with  every  manifesta- 
tion of  welcome,  and  himself  help  her  off  her 
horse,  taking  her  by  the  waist  for  that  purpose. 

Ham  Seay  and  I  being  mere  privates  were 
ordered  to  another  tree.  But  we  could  not  help 
seeing  that  cordial  relations  were  quickly  es- 
tablished between  our  commander  and  this 
young  woman.  We  saw  her  presently  take 
down  her  magnificent  back  hair  and  remove 
from  it  some  papers.  They  were  not  "  curl 
papers,"  or  that  sort  of  stuffing  which  women 
call  "rats."  Stuart  was  a  very  gallant  man, 
and  he  received  the  papers  with  much  fervor. 
He  spread  them  out  carefully  on  the  ground, 
and  seemed  to  be  reading  what  was  written  or 
drawn  upon  them. 

Then  he  talked  long  and  earnestly  with  the 
young  woman  and  seemed  to  be  coming  to 
some  definite  sort  of  understanding  with  her. 

Then  she  dined  with  him  on  some  fried  salt 
pork  and  some  hopelessly  indigestible  fried 
paste  which  we  called  bread. 

Then  he  mounted  her  on  her  mare  again 
and  summoned  Ham  Seay  and  me. 


84  A    Woman  s  Hair 

"  Escort  this  young  lady  back  to  Captain 
Irving,"  he  said.  "  Tell  him  to  send  her  to  the 
Federal  lines  under  flag  of  truce,  with  the  mes- 
sage that  she  was  inadvertently  captured  in  a 
picket  charge,  and  that  as  General  Stuart  does 
not  make  war  on  women  or  children,  he  begs  to 
return  her  to  her  home  and  friends." 

We  did  all  this. 

The  next  day,  Stuart  with  a  strong  force 
advanced  to  Mason's  and  Munson's  hills. 

From  there  we  could  clearly  see  a  certain 
house  in  Washington.  It  had  many  windows, 
and  each  had  a  dark  Holland  shade. 

When  we  stood  guard  we  were  ordered  to 
observe  minutely  and  report  accurately  the 
slidings  up  and  down  of  those  Holland  shades. 

We  never  knew  what  three  shades  up,  two 
half  up,  and  five  down  might  signify.  But  we 
had  to  report  it,  nevertheless,  and  Stuart  seemed 
from  that  time  to  have  an  almost  preternatural 
advance  perception  of  the  enemy's  movements. 

That  young  woman  certainly  had  a  superb 
shock  of  hair. 


A    MIDNIGHT   CRIME 

THE    CRIMINAL'S    OWN    ACCOUNT    OF    IT 

AS  there  is  no  law  that  can  now  reach  my 
crime,  I  may  as  well  tell  all  about  it. 

Soon  after  we  sat  down  before  Petersburg,  in 
the  summer  of  1864,  I  was  sent  on  a  little  mili- 
tary mission  accompanied  by  Johnny  Garrett, 
into  the  land  of  desolation  —  that  part  of 
Northern  Virginia  which  lay  sometimes  in  the 
possession  of  one  army,  sometimes  in  possession 
of  the  other,  but  was  mostly  left  in  nobody's  pos- 
session at  all,  and  open  to  raids  from  both  sides. 

That  region  had  been  swept  by  fire  and  sword 
for  nearly  four  years.  It  had  been  tramped  over 
by  both  armies,  and  latterly  had  been  subjected 
to  that  process  of  destruction  which  Sheridan 
had  in  mind  when  he  said  of  another  region 
that  "  the  crow  that  flies  over  it  must  carry  his 
rations  with  him." 

How  anybody  managed  to  live  at  all  in  such 
a  region  has  always  been  a  puzzle,  but  a  few 
people  did. 

We  had  slept,  Johnny  Garrett  and  I,  by  the 
side  of  a  fence  the  night  before,  and  without 
*5 


86  A  Midnight  Crime 

breakfast  we  had  been  riding  all  day.  Late  in 
the  afternoon  we  made  up  our  minds  to  go  for 
supper  and  lodging  to  a  great  country  house 
which  I  had  frequently  visited  as  a  guest  in  the 
days  of  its  abundance.  As  we  rode  through  the 
plantation,  decay  manifested  itself  on  every 
hand.  There  was  a  small,  straggling  crop  in 
process  of  growth,  but  sadly  ill  attended. 
There  were  no  animals  in  sight  except  five 
sheep  that  we  saw  grazing  on  a  hillside. 

As  we  turned  the  corner  of  the  woodland  the 
mansion  came  into  view.  Only  its  walls  were 
left  standing.  Fire  had  destroyed  the  rest.  At 
the  gate  we  met  an  old  negro  serving-man, 
whom  I  had  known  in  the  palmy  days  as 
Uncle  I  sham. 

When  I  had  seen  him  last  he  was  in  livery. 
As  I  saw  him  now  he  was  in  rags. 

Some  eager,  hurried  inquiries  as  to  the  fam- 
ily brought  out  the  fact  that  the  mistress  of 
the  mansion  with  her  two  grown  daughters  was 
living  in  one  of  the  negro  quarters  in  rear  of  the 
burned  house,  and  that  he,  alone,  remained  as  a 
servant  on  the  plantation. 

"  Dey  took  all  de  res'  off  No'th,  an'  dey  tried 
to  take  Isham,  too.  But  Isham  he  slip'  de 
bridle  one  night,  an'  he  came  back  heah  to 
look  after  ole  missus  an'  de  girls.  So  heah  I  is, 
an'  heah  Ise  gwine  to  stay." 

We  did  not  remain  to  hear  Isham's  account 


A  Midnight  Crime  87 

of  his  adventures,  but  hurried  on  to  find  out  the 
condition  of  things  with  the  family.  There 
were  but  two  rooms  —  one  below,  and  the  other 
above  stairs  —  in  the  hut  in  which  they  were 
living.  Yet  the  proud  woman  who  was  thus 
reduced  showed  no  shame  of  her  poverty,  but 
gloried  in  it  rather,  as  the  old  soldier  glories  in 
the  scars  received  in  his  country's  service. 

She  welcomed  us  with  as  warm  a  show  of 
hospitality  as  she  had  ever  made  in  the  old 
days  of  lavish  entertainment. 

After  our  first  inquiries  concerning  their  wel- 
fare, she  said  to  us  laughingly :  "  I  wouldn't 
keep  you  to-night,  but  would  send  you  on 
to  a  better  place,  if  I  knew  any  better  in 
the  neighborhood.  As  it  is,  you'll  have  to 
sleep  under  the  trees  for  lack  of  room ;  but 
you  boys  are  rather  used  to  that.  As  for 
supper,  I  can  give  you  some  corn-bread  and 
some  sorghum  molasses.  The  bread  won't  be 
very  good,  because  our  supply  of  salt  has  run 
out,  and  of  course  as  the  cows  have  all  been 
killed  I  can't  give  you  butter.  But  there's 
enough  bread  and  sorghum,  anyhow." 

"  How  long  since  you  had  meat  ?  "     I  asked. 

"  About  three  weeks,"  she  replied.  "  That  is 
to  say,  since  the  last  big  raiding  party  came 
by." 

"  Have  you  no  pigs  left  ? " 

"  No,  we  haven't  a  living  animal  of  any  kind." 


88  A  Midnight  Crime 

"  Whose  sheep  are  those  I  saw  as  I  rode  up  ?  " 

"They  belong  to  a  neighbor,"  she  answered. 
"  They're  what's  left  of  a  large  flock.  When 
the  raiders  were  here  those  five  sheep  ran  into 
the  bushes  and  escaped.  But  even  if  they  were 
ours,  you  know,  we  couldn't  kill  one." 

I  remembered  then  that  a  law  of  the  Confed- 
eracy made  it  a  crime  severely  punishable  to 
slaughter  a  sheep,  even  one's  own.  They  were 
wanted  by  the  government  for  their  wool  to 
clothe  the  army. 

Waiving  all  this  aside  as  a  matter  of  small 
moment,  our  hostess  pressed  us  again  to  dis- 
mount for  supper. 

At  this  point  Johnny  Garrett  lied : 

"  Oh,  we  can't  stay  to  supper,  and  the  fact  is 
we  couldn't  eat  if  we  did.  It's  only  half  an  hour 
since  we  ate  the  best  part  of  a  ham  out  of  our 
haversacks.  And  besides  we've  got  to  get  to 
Gordonsville  to-night." 

I  am  afraid  I  was  accessory  after  the  fact  to 
the  telling  of  that  lie.  At  least  I  didn't  contra- 
dict it. 

We  pushed  on  a  little  way  till  we  had  got 
out  of  sight  of  the  house.  Then  we  stopped  by 
mutual  consent  under  a  tree  and  dismounted. 

"The  grass  is  pretty  good,"  I  said,  "and  we'll 
let  the  horses  crop  it  while  we  wait  for  it  to  get 
good  and  dark."  It  did  not  seem  necessary  to 
mention  what  we  were  to  wait  for  darkness  for. 


A  Midnight  Crime  89 

"Yes,"  said  Johnny,  "there  are  the  sheep, 
and  I'll  keep  an  eye  on  them." 

When  it  was  thoroughly  dark  we  committed 
a  double  crime. 

It  was  sheep  stealing  as  well  as  a  violation  of 
the  other  law,  but  we  were  not  in  a  mood  to 
consider  such  things  just  then.  Under  cover 
of  the  darkness  we  killed  the  fattest  sheep  in 
the  lot,  dressed  it  as  well  as  we  could,  and  then 
by  the  light  of  some  matches  I  wrote  a  little 
note  on  a  leaf  from  my  memorandum  book.  It 
said  simply  this  :  — 

"There  is  no  law  to  forbid  some  hungry 
women  to  eat  a  sheep  that  somebody  else  has 
killed  in  violation  of  law." 

Pinning  this  to  the  carcass  we  carried  the 
mutton  to  the  house,  and  hung  it  to  a  tree 
where  it  would  be  seen  with  the  dawn. 

We  felt  as  well  about  this  thing  as  if  we  had 
been  engaged  in  some  highly  moral  act. 


A    LITTLE   REBEL 

IT  was  an  odd  kind  of  a  situation.  It  was  in 
1862,  and  we  were  on  the  coast  of  South 
Carolina  defending  the  railroad  line  between 
Charleston  and  Savannah. 

We  had  no  infantry  supports,  and  artillery  is 
supposed  to  be  helpless  without  such  supports. 
But  as  there  was  nothing  on  the  other  side,  ex- 
cept those  pestilent  sharp-shooters  in  the  Hay- 
ward  mansion,  we  did  not  need  support. 

It  was  our  business  to  shell  that  mansion, 
burn  it,  and  drive  the  sharp-shooters  out.  I 
may  say,  parenthetically,  that  we  didn't  like  the 
business.  Mr.  Hayward,  who  was  familiarly 
known  as  "Tiger  Bill,"  had  been  the  friend  of 
our  battery  ever  since  we  had  succeeded  in  put- 
ting out  a  fire  that  had  burnt  some  thousands 
of  panels  of  fence  for  him.  It  is  true  that  his 
friendship  for  us  was  in  the  main  a  reflex  of  his 
enmity  to  the  Charleston  Light  Dragoons  and 
the  Routledge  Mounted  Riflemen.  He  favored 
us  mainly  to  spite  them.  Nevertheless  he 
favored  us.  He  sent  a  wagon  every  morning 
to  our  camp  loaded  with  vegetables,  fruits,  suck- 
90 


She  was  singing  "  Dixie.' 


A  Little  Rebel  91 

ling  pigs,  and  whatever  else  his  dozen  planta- 
tions might  afford. 

Naturally,  we  did  not  like  the  job  of  burning 
one  of  his  country  houses.  But  as  business  is 
business,  so  in  war  orders  are  orders. 

Half  a  dozen  shells  did  the  work.  Flames 
burst  from  the  house  in  every  direction,  and 
the  enemy's  sharp-shooters  who  had  been  using 
it  as  a  vantage  ground  rapidly  retreated  across 
the  cotton  fields  to  the  woodlands  beyond  under 
fire  of  our  guns. 

Our  captain,  a  great  bearded  warrior,  six  feet 
four  inches  high,  and  as  rough  as  men  are  made 
in  appearance,  was  suddenly  seized  with  a  ten- 
der thought.  Turning  to  me,  he  said  :  "  There 
may  be  some  poor  devil  wounded  in  that  house 
and  likely  to  be  roasted.  Let's  ride  over  there 
and  see." 

We  put  spurs  to  our  horses,  dashed  through 
the  sharp-shooters'  fire,  and  a  few  minutes  later 
began  exploring  the  lower  quarters  of  the  house, 
the  fire  being  above.  We  found  nothing  till  we 
came  to  the  cellar.  There  we  discovered  a  little 
girl,  anywhere  from  two  to  three  years  old,  — 
I'm  not  a  good  judge  of  little  girls'  ages,  —  sitting 
in  a  little  rocking-chair,  and  singing  "  Dixie." 

The  captain  grabbed  her  suddenly  and  ran  to 
the  open  air  with  her,  for  the  volumes  of  smoke 
were  rapidly  penetrating  to  the  cellar.  When 
he  got  her  out,  he  said  :   "  Who  are  you  ? " 


92  A  Little  Rebel 

She  replied,  in  a  piping  little  voice,  "  I'm 
Lu/a/te." 

Whether  this  meant  that  her  name  was  Lula 
Lee,  or  Eulalie,  or  what,  we  could  not  make  out. 

"Where  is  your  mamma?  "  asked  the  captain. 

"  She's  dead  —  she  died  when  I  was  born." 

"  Where  is  your  papa  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  Those  ugly  other  people 
took  him  away.  When  he  saw  'em  coming,  he 
took  me  to  the  cellar,  and  told  me  to  stay  there 
so  the  shellies  wouldn't  hit  me." 

"Where's  your  maumey  ?  "  (Maumey  mean- 
ing in  South  Carolina  "negro  nurse.") 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  answered.  "Those  ugly 
other  people  took  all  the  colored  folks  away." 

Just  then  the  battery  advanced  with  its  colors 
flying.  Looking  up  the  little  girl  recognized 
the  Confederate  battle  banner  and  said :  "  That's 
my  kind  of  a  flag.  I  don't  like  that  ugly  other 
striped  thing." 

Manifestly  the  child  was  without  protectors. 
We  adopted  her  in  the  name  of  the  battery. 

When  we  returned  to  the  camp  several  serious 
questions  arose.  Jack  Hawkins,  one  of  the  ex- 
circus  clowns  of  the  battery,  suggested  that  first 
of  all  we  must  secure  a  chaperone  for  her. 
When  asked  what  he  meant  by  that,  he  said 
with  lordly  superiority :  "  Well,  you  see,  chap- 
erone is  French  for  nurse.  We  want  a  nurse 
for  this  little  child." 


A  Little  Rebel 


93 


"  Nonsense,"  said  Denton,  the  other  ex-circus 
clown,  "you  don't  know  any  more  about  the 
proprieties  than  you  do  about  French.  Chape- 
rone  means  somebody  to  look  after  a  church, 
and  this  little  girl  isn't  even  a  chapel.  We'll 
look  after  her,  and  we  don't  want  no  nurse  to 
help." 

The  captain,  with  his  long  beard,  was  holding 
the  little  child  in  his  arms  all  this  time,  and  she 
suddenly  turned  around  to  him  and  seizing  his 
beard  said :  "  I  like  your  big  whiskers.  They 
are  like  my  papa's.  You  don't  bite,  because 
you've  got  hair  on  your  face  ?  " 

"  No,  dear,"  he  replied,  "  I  don't  bite  such  as 
you." 

But  he  was  very  much  given  to  biting,  all  the 
same  —  as  the  enemy  had  more  than  once 
found  out. 

"  First  of  all,"  said  Denton,  who  was  nothing 
if  not  practical,  "the  little  girl's  got  to  have 
some  clothes." 

Denton  was  a  tailor,  as  well  as  a  clown,  and 
naturally  his  thoughts  were  the  first  to  run  in 
that  groove. 

"  I  ain't  much  used  to  making  girl's  clothes, 
but  a  tailor's  a  tailor,  and  if  anybody'll  provide 
me  the  materials,  I'll  undertake  to  fix  up  some 
gowns  for  her." 

Tom  Booker,  who  was  much  given  to  riding 
around   the   country,  said   at   once :    "  I   know 


94  A  Little  Rebel 

where  the  mortal  remains  of  an  old  store  re- 
pose, up  at  Gillisonville,  about  nine  miles  away. 
If  I  had  any  money —  " 

Every  man  thrust  his  hand  into  his  pocket, 
and  each  drew  out  what  he  had.  The  sum  total 
was  more  than  adequate.  When  Tom  returned 
a  few  hours  later  there  were  no  "  mortal  remains  " 
of  that  store  left.  He  brought  back  with  him 
thirty-seven  yards  of  highly  colored  calico,  of 
different  patterns,  one  red  blanket,  a  box  full 
of  galloon  trimming,  something  that  he  called 
"  gimp,"  two  bolts  of  domestic,  three  cans  of 
tomatoes,  and  two  bottles  of  chow-chow,  besides 
a  dozen  quarter  cases  of  sardines  and  two  kegs 
of  cove  oysters. 

He  dumped  the  merchandise  on  the  ground 
with  the  remark :  "  There,  I've  closed  that  store." 

Denton  made  some  invidious  remarks  reflect- 
ing upon  Tom's  taste  in  the  selection  of  calicoes, 
etc.,  adding  the  suggestion  that  there  was  gal- 
loon enough  and  "  gimp  "  enough  in  the  invoice 
"to  upholster  all  the  women  in  Charleston  for 
the  next  six  months  —  if  they  liked  that  kind 
of  thing." 

Nevertheless,  he  set  to  work  with  a  will. 
Within  a  day  or  two  the  little  lady  was  provided 
with  gowns  and  night-gowns,  and  underclothes 
sufficient  in  quantity,  at  least,  though  perhaps 
not  made  strictly  in  accordance  with  the  latest 
fashions  in  gear  of  that  kind.     Indeed,  Denton 


A  Little  Rebel  95 

had  succeeded  in  making  her  look  very  much 
hindsidebefore.  The  little  girl's  gowns  all  but- 
toned down  in  front.  But  the  little  girl  was 
pleased  with  what  she  called  the  "  gownies " 
and  sometimes  the  "pritties."  Their  barbaric 
colors  tickled  her  taste  so  much  that  Denton 
decided  to  make  her  a  cloak  out  of  the  flaming 
red  blanket. 

When  it  was  put  on  her,  her  glory  was  com- 
plete. She  said :  "  It  looks  like  my  kind  of  a 
flag,"  referring  to  the  red  of  the  battle  banner. 

She  was  taken  away  from  us  presently  by  a 
committee  of  good  women  of  the  neighborhood. 
She  became  the  protegee  of  a  lady  whose  whole 
life  had  been  given  to  caring  for  other  people, 
including  our  battery. 

Denton,  however,  put  in  a  claim  to  the  privi- 
lege of  continuing  to  fashion  her  clothes. 

"You  see  I've  got  the  whole  stock  of  that 
store  on  my  hands ;  and  since  I  learned  dress- 
making, I've  a  fancy  to  perfect  myself.  And 
you  see  I've  got  fond  of  the  little  girl." 

A  couple  of  tears  trickled  down  the  hoary 
old  sinner's  cheek,  and  Mrs.  Hutson  con- 
sented. 

Every  day  after  roll-call  the  captain  sent  a 
delegation  to  the  Hutsons'  house  to  ask  after 
the  battery's  child.  Every  day  when  we  drilled 
at  the  guns  the  little  girl  herself  came  in  her 


96  A  Little  Rebel 

barbaric  costume  to  see  what  she  called  her 
"  shooties,"  meaning  the  cannoneers. 

We  had  to  part  with  our  little  girl  presently, 
we  being  under  orders,  and  she  stationed.  As 
we  moved  away  from  the  station  on  our  flat 
cars,  she  stood  upon  the  platform,  and  waved 
"her  kind  of  a  flag"  at  us,  crying,  throwing 
kisses,  and  calling  out :  "  Good-by,  you  good 
shooties." 

I  think  the  morals  of  the  battery  were  dis- 
tinctly better  after  this  little  episode. 


TWENTY-ONE 

AFTER  the  battle  of  Bull  Run,  or  Manassas, 
as  we  called  it,  the  region  north  of  Fair- 
fax Court  House  was  a  No-man's  land. 

Little  by  little  we  occupied  it  during  that 
summer,  even  to  Mason's  and  Munson's  hills. 
But  the  process  of  occupation  was  slow.  When 
we  pressed  forward  immediately  after  the  battle 
all  that  region  was  terra  incognita. 

About  half  the  people  inhabiting  it  were  loyal 
to  one  side ;  about  half  to  the  other.  So  in 
asking  information  we  had  to  be  circumspect. 

But  we  had  assurance  that  the  Hopes  were 
loyal  to  our  side.  So  when  Lieutenant  Billy 
Wilds  was  sent  out  with  a  party  of  us,  on  scout- 
ing duty,  he  naturally  went  to  the  Hope  mansion 
for  information. 

He  got  it  in  abundance.  Charlotte  Hope,  the 
daughter  of  the  house,  came  out  to  give  it  to  us, 
and  she  was  very  enthusiastic.  She  was  a  bru- 
nette, full  of  life,  full  of  health,  and  full  of  en- 
thusiasm for  the  cause.  Besides,  she  knew  how 
to  sit  gracefully  on  a  rail  fence.  She  had  a  rich 
contralto  voice  that  had  narrowly  escaped  being 

H  W 


98  Twenty-One 

a  bass.  She  was  beautiful  to  her  finger  tips. 
She  "had  a  way  with  her"  that  was  fascinating 
beyond  belief. 

As  she  sat  there  on  the  rail  fence,  explaining 
the  geography  of  the  region  round  about,  we  all 
fell  in  love  with  her  as  troopers  should,  so  far  at 
least  as  to  be  ready  to  do  any  conceivable  deed 
of  derring-do  in  her  behalf.  But  Lieutenant 
Wilds  fell  in  love  with  her  in  fuller  fashion,  as 
was  afterwards  made  manifest. 

She  sat  there  on  the  fence  curled  up  most 
entrancingly  and  expounded  the  geography  of 
the  country  with  great  minuteness.  But  when 
she  tried  to  tell  us  just  where  a  certain  strong 
Federal  post  was,  which  we  very  much  wanted 
to  attack,  she  grew  impatient  of  words. 

Turning  to  a  negro  boy  she  said :  "  Saddle 
Saladin.     I'll  go  and  show  them." 

Three  minutes  later  she  was  in  the  saddle. 
Half  an  hour  afterwards  Charlie  Irving,  our 
captain  who  had  joined  us  and  taken  command, 
gently  ordered  her  to  the  rear.  As  I  have 
related  in  another  book  of  reminiscences  she 
refused  to  obey.  She  said  :  "  I  believe  you  are 
going  to  charge  those  fellows,  and  I  want  to  see 
the  fun." 

Well,  she  saw  the  fun.  We  made  the  charge. 
At  the  end  of  it  Lieutenant  Wilds  was  more  in 
love  with  her  than  ever. 

As  we  escorted  her  back  to  her  home  she 


Twenty-One  99 

broke  into  song.     Her  song  was  the  old  English 
ballad  which  begins :  — 

"  In  days  of  old,  when  knights  were  bold, 
And  barons  held  their  sway." 

As  she  sang,  she  laid  special  stress  upon  two 
passages  in  the  ballad.  One  was  the  line  where 
the  hero  says  :  — 

"  111  live  for  love  or  die." 

The  other  was,  where  as  death  overcomes  him 
he  sings :  — 

"  I've  kept  the  vow  I  swore." 

The  song  seemed,  whether  prophetically  or 
otherwise,  to  have  entered  this  young  girl's  soul 
and  to  have  taken  possession  of  her  spirit. 

It  was  not  long  afterwards  that  we  learned 
that  our  gallant  young  lieutenant  was  engaged 
to  be  married  to  Charlotte  Hope.  The  marriage 
was  to  take  place  as  soon  as  the  war  was  over. 
At  that  time  we  regarded  this  as  a  postponement 
of  only  a  few  months  at  most.  We  expected  to 
win  then  and  we  expected  to  win  quickly. 

Whenever  Lieutenant  Wilds  was  sent  upon 
a  scouting  expedition,  he  found  it  imperatively 
necessary  to  call  at  the  Hope  mansion  for  geo- 
graphical and  other  information,  though  by  this 
time  we  had  all  become  familiar  with  every  road 
and  footpath  in  that  quarter  of  Virginia. 

It  was  a  little  fiction  we  were  all  pleased  to  love 
him  for.     One  day  about  a  month  later,  while 


i  oo  Tzuen  ty-  One 

we  were  waiting  in  the  yard  for  Lieutenant 
Wilds  to  secure  the  necessary  geographical  in- 
formation indoors,  a  Federal  force  attacked  us. 
The  lieutenant  came  out  promptly,  swung  him- 
self into  the  saddle,  and  ordered  a  charge.  We 
fought  there  under  the  cherry  trees  for  full 
fifteen  minutes.  At  the  end  of  the  contest  the 
enemy  was  driven  away,  and  we  pursued  —  but 
three  of  our  saddles  were  empty. 

One  of  them  was  that  of  Lieutenant  Wilds. 

It  was  Charlotte's  wish  that  Lieutenant  Wilds 
should  be  buried  in  the  family  grave-yard  of  the 
Hopes.  It  was  also  her  wish  that  his  company 
should  attend  the  funeral. 

We  brought  two  other  companies  along  to 
stand  guard  and  prevent  any  possible  inter- 
ruption of  the  ceremonies.  We  buried  our  com- 
rade with  all  military  honors.  We  fired  the 
conventional  salute  over  the  grave. 

Then  we  proceeded  to  attack  a  military  force 
which  had  come  up,  intent  upon  disturbing  the 
obsequies. 

But  before  we  moved  off,  Charlotte,  who  had 
been  dry-eyed  from  the  first,  came  to  one  of  us 
and  said :  "  He  was  just  twenty-one.  It  will 
take  just  twenty-one  to  pay  for  him." 

It  was  only  two  or  three  days  later  when 
Charlie  Hopper  rode  into  the  camp  on  a  mag- 


Twenty-One  101 

nificent  chestnut-sorrel  mare.  We  did  not  know 
him. 

He  said  he  didn't  want  to  enlist.  He  merely 
wanted  to  join  the  company.  He  explained 
that  if  he  enlisted  he  would  be  a  man  under  pay. 
And  he  didn't  want  pay,  he  said,  for  the  work 
he  wanted  to  do.  Only  give  him  rations  and  a 
chance  and  he  would  be  satisfied. 

His  idea  of  a  chance  soon  developed  itself. 
He  wanted  to  be  as  continually  as  possible  in 
the  presence  of  the  enemy,  anywhere,  anyhow. 
He  wanted  to  shoot  all  the  "  Yankees  "  he  could. 
For  that  purpose  he  had  brought  with  him  the 
first  Whitworth  rifle  I  ever  saw,  with  its  long 
range,  its  telescopic  sights,  and  its  terrible  ac- 
curacy of  fire. 

He  seemed  about  sixteen  years  old.  He 
didn't  tell  us  anything  about  himself,  not  even 
where  he  came  from.  But  he  had  a  long  talk, 
and  a  confidential  one,  with  Charlie  Irving. 
After  that  Charlie  paid  him  special  attention. 
He  detailed  him  upon  every  scouting  expedition 
that  had  "  business "  in  it.  Sometimes  when 
scouting  expeditions  were  slack,  the  young  fel- 
low would  go  off  by  himself  and  remain  for  a 
day  or  two  in  close  proximity  to  the  enemy's 
lines. 

Each  day  he  wore  upon  his  breast  a  little  tag 
with  a  number  on  it. 

One  day  when  the  number  had  reached  seven- 


i  o  2  Twenty-  One 

teen,  he  and  I  lay  together  behind  a  sycamore 
log,  shooting  at  a  peculiarly  pestilent  picket 
post.  After  one  of  his  shots  he  called  out, 
"  Eighteen."  The  next  shot  was  simultaneous, 
he  and  I  firing  together.  The  man  at  whom  we 
fired  fell  forward  over  his  log,  evidently  dead. 

Charlie  Hopper  turned  to  me  and  said  :  "  You 
fired  at  the  same  moment  I  did  ;  it's  a  disputed 
bird.     I  can't  count  him." 

Full  of  curiosity  I  asked:  "What  do  you 
mean,  Hopper  ? " 

He  answered:  "Nothing  —  Just  counting  — 
Settling  a  score  !  " 

It  was  only  a  few  days  later  when  we  were 
at  Falls  Church.  Young  Hopper's  score  read 
twenty,  when  he  asked  permission  to  ride  out 
and  personally  encounter  an  officer  who  had 
separated  himself  from  his  command.  The  per- 
mission was  given.  Hopper  leaped  upon  his 
mare,  drew  his  sword,  and  galloped  toward  the 
officer.  They  met  in  mid  field.  The  officer 
fired  just  as  the  boy  clove  him  to  the  saddle. 
Hopper  fell  forward  on  his  horse  and  rode 
back  to  the  lines. 

As  he  rolled  off  the  saddle,  he  said  :  "  I'm 
done  for,  boys,  but  I've  made  it  twenty-one  with- 
out counting  a  single  disputed  bird."  Then, 
feebly,  he  broke  into  song,  singing,  — 

"  I've  kept  the  vow  I  swore." 


Twenty-One  103 

Before  we  buried  him  in  the  Hope  cemetery 
the  next  day,  the  captain  told  me  that  Charlie 
Hopper  was  none  other  than  Charlotte  Hope. 

But  I  had  guessed  the  secret  that  day  when 
she  had  refused  to  count  the  "disputed  bird." 


A    BEEF   EPISODE 

WE  had  no  rations  at  Bluffton,  in  South 
Carolina. 

The  sea  was  there  with  its  multitudinous  fish, 
and  crabs  and  shrimps,  and  with  its  mountainous 
banks  of  oysters.  There  were  turkeys  and  deer 
and  squirrels  in  the  woods,  and  quail  and  marsh 
fowl  in  the  fields.  We  were  expected  to  take 
care  of  ourselves. 

But  one  cannot  shoot  turkeys,  or  deer,  or 
squirrels  with  a  twelve-pounder  Napoleon.  And 
as  for  the  sea  food,  while  we  rejoiced  in  it 
for  a  time,  we  became  desperately  weary  of  it 
after  a  while. 

We  began,  therefore,  to  frequent  Bull  Island. 
Bull  Island  lay  near  Hilton  Head,  which  the 
enemy  occupied.  Bull  Island  had  been  aban- 
doned at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  and  the 
cattle  on  the  plantations  there  had  gone  wild, 
breeding  as  buffalo  might. 

Here  was  a  source  of  supply.  We  resolved 
to  avail  ourselves  of  it.  About  twice  a  week  we 
sent  expeditions  over  there  in  whale-boats,  and 
killed  a  bullock  or  a  cow  or  two,  dressed  the 
meat  and  brought  it  home,  taking  care  to  bring 
104 


A  Beef  Episode  105 

the  skin  also,  in  order  that  our  half-crazy  doctor 
might  experiment  on  it  with  his  new  process 
for  quick  tanning.  As  an  incident,  I  may  re- 
mark that  not  one  of  us  ever  got  a  pair  of  boots 
out  of  those  hides. 

The  enemy  on  Hilton  Head  were  also  more 
or  less  in  lack  of  beef.  They,  too,  discovered 
Bull  Island,  and  frequented  it  with  a  purpose 
similar  to  our  own. 

One  day  Joe  went  over  there  with  sixteen 
men  in  a  boat  carrying  that  number  of  oars, 
and  pretty  well  rigged  for  sailing.  He  had  no 
sooner  got  his  command  into  the  cane-brake  in 
search  of  cattle,  than  he  discovered  a  party  of 
Federals  immediately  in  front  of  him.  In  the 
dense  growth  of  the  forest  he  could  have  no 
idea  whatever  of  his  enemy's  strength.  His 
one  thought  was,  to  avoid  the  capture  of  his 
force.  To  that  end  he  must  make  as  brave  a 
show  of  strength  as  possible.  He  therefore 
ordered  his  little  squad  of  men  to  scatter  them- 
selves out  over  a  line  of  three  or  four  hundred 
yards,  and  to  keep  up  as  continuous  a  fire  as 
possible. 

The  enemy's  line  seemed  to  be  of  about  equal 
length,  and  their  fire  about  the  same  as  his.  It 
was  a  little  before  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning 
when  this  thing  began,  and  it  was  not  until 
after  dusk  that  the  two  forces  sneaked  simulta- 
neously to  their  boats. 


106  A  Beef  Episode 

Neither  had  any  beef,  and  each  discovered 
that  the  other  was  numerically  about  equal  to 
itself. 

So  far  as  we  were  ever  able  to  discover,  no- 
body had  been  killed  or  wounded  on  either  side. 
A  day  had  been  wasted  in  futile  firing  through 
the  cane.  Both  sides  had  been  disappointed  of 
their  provisions. 

Neither  had  injured  the  other,  neither  had 
gained  any  benefit,  and  the  cattle  had  had  a 
good  time. 

Thirty  years  afterwards  Joe  and  the  sergeant 
on  the  other  side  met,  and  one  said  to  the  other : 
"  After  all  it  would  have  been  better  if  we  had 
turned  our  backs  on  each  other  that  day.  There 
were  cattle  on  both  sides."  The  other  answered : 
"Yes,  but  that  would  have  been  the  wise  way 
of  peace;  we  were  engaged  in  the  barbarism  of 
war." 


BERNARD  POLAND'S  PROPHECY 

I  DO  not  pretend  to  understand  it  at  all. 
The  best  theories  I  have  ever  been  able 
to  form,  whether  physiological  or  psychological, 
or  a  mixture  of  the  two,  have  utterly  failed  to 
account  to  my  mind  for  the  facts  in  Bernard 
Poland's  case. 

I  tell  the  story,  therefore,  without  trying  to 
explain  it. 

In  the  year  1857  I  became  a  student  in  a 
Virginian  college  not  far  from  Richmond.  When 
I  took  possession  of  my  quarters  in  the  building 
three  or  four  days  before  the  session  began,  I 
was  an  entire  stranger  to  every  one  there.  As 
I  had  already  spent  two  years  in  another  college, 
I  knew  the  importance  of  using  circumspection 
in  the  choice  of  friends  in  such  a  place,  so  that 
I  was  in  no  hurry  to  make  acquaintances.  It 
was  my  deliberate  purpose,  indeed,  to  avoid  all 
intercourse  with  my  fellow-students,  until  such 
time  as  I  should  discover  who  and  what  they 
were. 

But  one  morning — the  next  after  my  arrival, 
I  think  it  was  —  as   I   sat  in  the  great  stone 
portico,   two   students,   evidently  old    acquaint- 
107 


108       Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy 

ances,  and  both  of  them  members  of  the  college 
during  the  previous  year,  stood  near  me  discuss- 
ing some  matter  or  other,  I  forget  what. 

The  younger  was  bantering  and  teasing  the 
other  by  expressing  all  sorts  of  unconventional, 
radical,  and  even  revolutionary  opinions,  which 
his  friend  took  the  trouble  seriously  to  combat, 
greatly  to  the  younger  man's  amusement,  as  I 
could  see.  Their  conversation  did  not  impress 
me  in  the  least,  except  as  it  revealed  to  me 
something  in  the  younger  man's  mind  and  char- 
acter which  fascinated  me  unaccountably. 

His  age  was  about  the  same  as  mine.  His 
scholarship  was  about  equally  advanced,  as  I 
learned  when  we  entered  the  same  class.  Like 
myself  he  had  been  an  omnivorous  reader ;  but 
where  I  had  read  with  a  disposition  to  select 
and  criticise  and  differ,  he  appeared  to  have 
read  with  the  most  hospitable  mind  I  ever  knew. 
He  gave  at  least  a  g?(asi-ht\iti  to  everything 
that  literature  had  to  offer  for  his  entertainment. 
He  was  very  slender,  even  to  frailty  of  body. 
He  had  a  thin  and  not  handsome  face,  rather 
sharp  features,  lips  on  which  there  was  a  singu- 
larly joyous  smile,  and  great  gray  eyes  filled 
with  an  extraordinary  sadness.  The  mouth  and 
eyes  contradicted  each  other  so  flatly,  that  dur- 
ing all  the  years  of  our  acquaintance  I  was 
never  quite  able  to  persuade  myself  that  they 
properly  belonged   to   the   same   countenance ; 


Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy       109 

that  one  or  the  other  portion  of  the  face  was  not 
always  hiding  behind  a  mask.  The  effect  was 
indescribable ;  and  among  all  the  men  and 
women  I  have  ever  known  I  have  seen  nothing 
else  like  it. 

I  knew  nothing  about  the  man  except  as  I 
had  caught  from  conversation  that  his  name 
was  Bernard  Poland.  Yet  the  moment  I  saw 
him,  and  listened  to  his  chatter,  I  made  up  my 
mind  that  he  should  be  my  closest  friend.  I 
felt  that  between  him  and  me  there  would  grow 
up  that  intellectual  sympathy  which  is  the  only 
secure  basis  of  friendship  between  men. 

Not  that  he  and  I  were  at  all  alike  in  any  way. 
Indeed,  two  more  utterly  unlike  personalities  it 
would  be  difficult  to  find  or  imagine.  I  was 
serious ;  he  playful,  always.  I  was  robust  and 
inclined  to  plume  myself  somewhat  upon  my 
muscularity;  while  he  was  delicate  both  in  frame 
and  health,  and  cared  next  to  nothing  for  any 
of  the  rougher  sports  in  which  I  took  almost  an 
insane  delight.  Intellectually,  too,  we  were  ex- 
act opposites,  as  I  have  already  hinted.  I  was 
inclined  to  doubt  and  to  question  all  things, 
rejecting  all  that  I  failed  to  comprehend  and 
account  for ;  he  was  something  of  a  mystic  — 
not  superstitious,  but  abounding  in  faith,  and 
still  more  in  the  possibilities  of  faith. 

He  was  never  quite  ready,  dogmatically,  to 
reject  anything,  however  incapable  of  proof  it 


no       Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy 

might  be,  so  long  as  it  was  also  incapable  of 
positive  and  conclusive  refutation. 

He  was  not  credulous  exactly,  yet  he  scouted 
no  superstition  which  was  not  either  manifestly 
or  demonstrably  absurd. 

All  this  I  learned  afterwards,  however.  At 
present  I  was  not  even  acquainted  with  him, 
though  I  had  made  up  my  mind  to  introduce 
myself  after  the  free  and  easy  manner  that 
obtains  among  schoolmates. 

When  he  had  finished  his  bantering  talk  with 
his  fellow-student,  he  walked  away  to  his  room, 
which  was  in  sight  as  I  sat  there  in  the  portico. 
The  other  student  strolled  down  the  roadway 
leading  to  the  great  gates.  He  had  no  sooner 
gone  than  Bernard  Poland  came  out  again,  and 
walking  up  to  me  said :  "  You  and  I  ought  to 
be  friends,  and  will  be,  I  think.  My  name  is 
Bernard  Poland.  What's  yours?  This  is  a  sin- 
gular way  to  introduce  oneself,  but  I  can't  help 
it.  The  moment  I  saw  you  sitting  there  I  made 
up  my  mind  that  you  and  I  would  be  chums. 
What  do  you  say,  old  fellow?" 

To  say  that  I  was  astonished  is  to  express  my 
feelings  feebly.  I  was  startled,  almost  fright- 
ened, at  his  words,  which  were  identically  those 
that  I  had  been  revolving  in  my  mind  as  a  pos- 
sible or  impossible  introductory  address  to  him. 

We  were  friends  at  once.  And  though  I 
have   known   many   other   friendships,  I   have 


Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy       1 1 1 

known  none  closer  or  more  satisfactory  than 
that  then  formed  with  Bernard  Poland.  We 
became,  as  he  said,  "  Chums." 

During  the  long  vacation  Bernard  spent 
many  weeks  with  me  at  my  home,  and  I  in 
turn  visited  him  in  a  delightful  old  Virginian 
house,  where  father,  mother,  brother,  and  sister 
held  him  in  tenderest  regard  as  their  chief 
object  of  affection. 

After  our  college  days  were  done  we  missed 
no  opportunity  of  spending  a  day  or  a  week 
together,  our  affection  suffering  no  diminution 
and  knowing  no  change. 

One  day  in  1859,  or  about  that  time,  we  were 
riding  together  over  a  beautiful  region  in  North- 
ern Virginia.  We  talked  of  a  hundred  things, 
as  was  our  custom.  Among  them  a  number  of 
metaphysical  and  psychological  things  came  up 
for  discussion. 

"  Do  you  know,"  said  Bernard  presently,  "  I 
sometimes  think  prophecy  isn't  so  strange  a 
thing  after  all  as  most  people  think  it.  I 
really  see  no  reason  why  any  earnest  man  might 
not  be  able  to  foresee  the  future  now  and  then 
in  moments  of  exaltation." 

"There's  reason  enough  to  my  mind,"  I  re- 
plied, "  in  the  fact  that  future  events  do  not 
exist  as  yet.  We  cannot  know  that  which  is 
not,  though  we  may  shrewdly  guess  it  at 
times.     But  when  we  do,  we  are  only  arguing 


112       Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy 

from  known  or  suspected  causes  to  their  neces- 
sary consequences.  And  that  is  in  no  proper 
sense  prophecy  at  all." 

"Your  argument  is  good  enough,  but  the 
premises  are  bad,  I  think,"  replied  my  friend, 
meditatively,  his  mouth  wreathed  with  a  smile, 
but  his  great  sad  eyes  looking  solemnly  into 
mine. 

"  How  so  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Why !  I  doubt  the  truth  of  your  assumption 
that  future  events  do  not  exist  as  yet." 

"Well,  go  on;  I'm  ready  to  hear  your  ex- 
planation or  your  theory  or  whatever  else  it 
is,"  said  I,  laughingly. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know  that  the  idea  is  mine  at 
all.  I  suppose  that  others  have  gone  over  the 
ground  before  me,  though  I  think,  perhaps,  my 
application  of  the  thought  is  new.  What  I 
have  in  mind  is  this :  Past  and  Future  are  only 
divisions  of  Time.  They  do  not  belong  at  all 
to  Eternity.  We,  living  in  Time,  cannot  divest 
ourselves  of  its  trammels.  We  cannot  conceive 
of  any  event  without  assigning  a  Time  relation 
to  it;  without  investing  it  with  the  trammels 
and  harness  and  paraphernalia  of  Time.  To 
us  every  event  must  be  Past,  or  Future,  with 
reference  to  other  events.  But  is  there,  in 
reality,  any  such  thing  as  a  Past  or  a  Future  ? 
If  there  is  any  such  thing  as  Eternity,  it  now 
is   and   always   has   been   and   ever   must   be. 


Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy       113 

Time  is  a  mere  delusion :  a  false  medium, 
through  which  we  look  at  things  askant.  As 
there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  Time  in  Eternity, 
there  can  be  no  such  thing  there  as  a  Past  or  a 
Future  event.  If  Eternity  is  anything  more 
than  Time  exaggerated  and  extended,  —  if,  in- 
deed, there  is  any  such  thing  as  Eternity,  —  it  is 
not  subject  to  the  laws  and  conditions  of  Time. 
There  can  be  no  Past  and  no  Future  there ;  but 
only  an  Eternal  NOW. 

"  The  absolute  truth  is  not  that  which  we  see 
through  a  distorting  medium  of  Time,  but  that 
which  we  should  see  if  we  were  in  Eternity  and 
freed  from  the  illusions  of  Time.  To  beings 
who  see  thus  clearly  and  truthfully,  all  things 
must  exist  in  an  eternal  Present.  All  things 
that  have  been  or  shall  be,  now  are.  What  we 
call '  Memory,'  is  only  a  mode  of  consciousness, 
and  to  know  a  Future  event  is  a  precisely  similar 
mode  of  consciousness.  Memory  and  prevision 
are  only  different  ways  of  knowing  a  fact  that 
now  is.  I  see  no  reason  to  regard  the  one  as 
any  more  truly  impossible  than  the  other. 

"I  grant  that  in  its  ordinary  Time-clogged 
state  the  mind  is  not  capable  of  discovering 
those  occurrences  which  to  us  seem  future  ones. 
But  it  seems  to  me  that  there  are,  or  at  least 
may  be,  conditions  of  mind  in  which  one  rises 
above  the  trammels  of  Time  and  sees  things 
as  they  are.     Every  true   poet   is  at   times   a 


ii4       Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy 

prophet  by  reason  of  this  exaltation  of  soul. 
And  all  the  well-attested  prophets  are  poets 
of  the  first  order." 

My  friend  had  no  opportunity  to  finish,  nor  I 
to  reply  to  his  wire-drawn  metaphysics,  as  we 
were  joined  at  this  stage  of  the  conversation  by 
an  acquaintance  of  the  earth  earthy,  whose  talk 
was  of  crops. 

When  he  quitted  us  we  were  nearing  a  line 
of  hills  to  which  Bernard  directed  my  attention. 

"There!"  he  exclaimed.  " That  would  make 
a  magnificent  battlefield." 

I  knew  his  enthusiastic  fondness  for  the  study 
of  military  history  and  the  details  of  battles.  In 
common  with  most  other  people  who  have  seen 
nothing  of  war,  I  had  never  been  able  to  picture 
a  battle  in  my  mind  ;  and  in  reading  history  I 
had  always  found  it  difficult  to  comprehend  the 
topographical  descriptions  of  battlefields,  or  to 
understand  the  influence  of  hill  and  dale,  of 
copse  and  stream,  upon  the  issue  of  a  combat. 
Bernard  had  mastered  the  whole  subject.  He 
had  often  moulded  in  soft  earth  for  my  instruc- 
tion miniature,  but  exact,  representations  of 
many  famous  battlefields. 

The  ground  we  were  on  was  a  chain  of  hills 
crossing  a  public  thoroughfare,  and  my  friend 
soon  grew  enthusiastic  in  his  account  of  how 
one  army  would  be  posted  here,  and  the  other 
there ;  how  the  flanks  of  each  would  rest  upon 


Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy       115 

certain  protected  points  and  how  the  attacking 
force  would  try  to  carry  this  or  that  position. 

"If  the  attacking  general  knows  his  business," 
he  said,  "  he  will  strain  every  nerve  to  drive  his 
adversary  from  that  little  knoll  there.  And  if 
he  succeeds  in  planting  a  battery  or  two  there, 
properly  supported,  his  enemy  will  have  to 
charge  him  out  of  the  place  or  reconstruct  his 
own  lines,  and  to  reconstruct  them  will  cost  him 
half  the  value  of  his  position." 

A  new  look  came  into  Bernard's  face.  The 
smile  had  gone  from  his  lips,  the  great  sad  look 
was  in  his  eyes.  Gazing  at  me  with  intense 
earnestness,  he  cried  out :  "  He  must  drive  them 
back.  _  If  they  once  hold  that  knoll  —  " 

Bernard  paused,  grew  very  pale,  and  then 
said  with  some  difficulty  with  his  vocal  organs : 
"  Let's  gallop  away  from  here." 

I  followed  his  retreating  form,  and  when  we 
drew  rein  again,  we  were  a  full  mile  distant  from 
the  place  of  this  field  lecture.  My  friend  had 
meantime  regained  his  color  and  composure,  but 
the  old  smile  had  not  yet  returned  to  his  lips. 

"Are  you  ill,  Bernard  ?"  I  asked. 

"  No,  I  am  quite  well,  thank  you." 

"Then  what  — " 

"I'll  tell  you  all  about  it  if  you  won't  laugh 
at  me,"  he  said,  his  lips  resuming  something  of 
their  ordinary  expression.  "  The  fact  is,  all  that 
was  prophecy,  or  prevision,  or  what  you  please 


n6       Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy 

to  call  it.  While  I  was  explaining  an  imaginary 
and  possible  battle,  it  became  real.  That 
battle  is  a  fact.  I  saw  the  two  armies  as 
plainly  as  I  see  you,  and  when  the  enemy 
planted  that  battery  there  on  the  hill,  driving 
our  forces  away,  I  was  among  the  troops 
ordered  to  charge  them  as  a  forlorn  hope,  and 
I  fell  right  there,  in  front  of  the  guns,  riddled 
with  canister  shot.  I  was  ahead  of  the  line, 
for  some  reason,  and  just  as  I  fell  our  men 
were  driven  back  by  a  counter-charge  right 
over  my  body.  My  friend,  prevision  is  pos- 
sible. Prevision  is  a  fact.  The  battle,  the 
charge,  the  counter-charge,  and  my  death,  right 
there,  are  what  we  call  Future  events.  But  I 
know  them  now  as  well  as  I  know  anything 
else.     I  saw  it  all.     I  know  it  for  truth." 

I  was  horrified.  I  tried  to  draw  his  mind 
away  from  the  distressing  picture  he  had  con- 
jured up.  He  seeing  my  purpose  said  :  "  I  am 
not  demented,  and  this  doesn't  trouble  me  in 
the  least.  It  is  all  fact,  but  I  am  not  unhappy 
about  it.  I  turned  pale,  it  is  true  —  any 
man  would  with  half  a  dozen  canister  shot 
passing  through  his  body.  But  I  am  not 
frightened,  not  demoralized,  and  not  in  the 
least  apprehensive.  I  don't  know  when  all 
this  is  to  happen,  and  as  our  country  is  at  peace 
with  all  the  world,  I  think  it  is  not  likely  that 
the  battle  will  come  soon.     But  it  will  come. 


Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy        117 

Be  sure  of  that.     Now  let's  talk  of  something 
else." 

With  that  he  resolutely  dismissed  the  subject, 
and  he  never  referred  to  it  again. 

During  the  terrible  campaign  of  1864,  the 
command  to  which  I  belonged,  after  a  hard 
day's  march,  was  sent  at  ten  o'clock  at  night  to 
take  post  upon  the  line. 

All  night  long  we  lay  there  expecting  the 
furious  onset  of  the  enemy,  whose  plan  it 
seemed  to  be  to  keep  us  perpetually  marching 
or  fighting. 

With  the  early  dawn  came  the  battle.  And 
as  daylight  revealed  the  features  of  the  newly 
chosen  battlefield,  I  recognized  it  as  precisely 
the  one  that  Bernard  and  I  had  ridden  over 
several  years  before.  On  my  right,  less  than 
half  a  mile  away,  a  furious  struggle  was  in 
progress.  I  looked  and  saw  our  troops  driven 
back  from  the  little  eminence  on  which  he  and 
I  had  stood.  The  enemy  hurried  two  batteries 
forward,  and  planting  them  there  opened  a 
fierce,  enfilading  fire  upon  that  part  of  the  line 
in  which  I  stood. 

I  saw  at  once  that  if  those  batteries  should 
remain  there,  we  must  retire  and  reconstruct  our 
lines.  We  stood  our  ground,  however,  in  the 
hope  that  the  critical  position  might  be  re- 
covered.    Quickly  an  attempt  was  made  to  that 


n8       Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy 

end.  A  heavy  body  of  infantry  was  thrown 
forward  with  desperate  impulse,  and  straining 
my  eyes  with  an  intensity  of  eagerness,  which  I 
had  never  felt  before,  I  saw  one  slender  form  in 
advance  of  the  line.  A  dense  volume  of  powder 
smoke  immediately  shut  out  the  view. 

When  it  cleared  away  the  enemy's  batteries 
were  still  there.  Our  men  had  been  repulsed. 
A  minute  later  a  second  charge  was  made  and 
it  proved  successful. 

But  I  knew  that  I  had  lost  a  friend  there. 

The  battle  over,  I  scanned  every  list  of  killed 
and  wounded  I  could  find,  but  could  learn 
nothing  of  my  friend  from  them.  I  had  every 
reason  to  believe  that  he  was  not  there  at  all. 
He  had  been  taken  prisoner  some  months 
before  and  paroled.  When  I  had  last  heard 
from  him  he  was  quietly  pursuing  his  studies  at 
home  while  waiting  for  his  exchange. 

I  tried  to  console  myself  with  this  and  with 
the  reflection  that  the  partial  fulfilment  of  his 
prophecy  was  quite  accidental  and  constituted 
no  reason  for  assuming  its  complete  fulfilment. 

We  were  on  the  march  or  in  action  all  the 
time,  too ;  and  I  had  plenty  of  occupation  with 
which  to  drive  depressing  thoughts  from  my 
mind. 

We  finally  sat  down  before  Petersburg,  and 
the  eternity  of  an  eight  months'  siege  began.  I 
was  sent  to  Richmond  on  some  military  errand, 


Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy        119 

and  while  there  availed  myself  of  the  opportu- 
nity to  visit  some  friends. 

"  Where  is  Bernard  ?  "  I  asked  as  lightly  as  I 
could,  of  one  who  was  intimate  with  his  family. 

"Haven't  you  heard?"  he  replied.  "The 
poor  fellow  was  exchanged  in  the  spring,  was 
elected  first  lieutenant  of  a  company,  and  was 
killed,  it  is  supposed,  in  one  of  the  battles,  I 
forget  which.  He  was  in  command  of  his  com- 
pany, when  it  was  ordered  to  charge  some  field 
batteries  on  a  little  hill,  and  his  men  say  he  was 
last  seen  ten  or  a  dozen  feet  in  advance  of  the 
line,  just  before  a  counter-charge  drove  them 
back.  As  the  counter-charge  was  preceded 
immediately  by  a  volley  of  canister,  the  smoke 
hid  him  from  view.  But  there  seems  to  be  no 
doubt  that  he  fell  there,  riddled  with  canister 
shot." 

A  few  days  later  I  received  a  letter  from  one 
of  Bernard's  brother  officers,  in  which,  after 
recapitulating  the  facts  already  set  forth,  he 
went  on  to  say  :  "  Before  we  were  ordered  to  the 
charge,  Bernard  specially  requested  me,  in  the 
event  of  his  death  that  day,  to  write  you  an  exact 
description  of  the  spot  on  which  he  fell.  He  said, 
1  He  will  remember  it.'  Though  what  he  meant 
by  that,  I  have  never  been  able  to  guess.  But 
in  loyalty  to  the  love  I  bore  him,  I  have  taken 
this  first  opportunity  to  comply  with  the  last 
request  he  made  on  earth." 


120      Bernard  Poland's  Prophecy 

The  author  of  that  letter  who  now  occupies  a 
prominent  position  in  public  life  will  understand, 
after  reading  this  sketch,  what  Bernard  meant 
in  saying  that  I  would  remember  the  spot  on 
which  he  fell. 


A    BREACH    OF   ETIQUETTE 

WE  had  marched  nearly  all  night,  in  order 
to  join  Jeb  Stuart  at  the  time  appointed. 
This  was  in  the  early  summer  of  1861. 

We  regarded  ourselves  with  more  or  less  of 
self-pity,  as  sleep-sacrificing  heroes,  who  were 
clearly  entitled  to  a  full  day's  rest. 

Jeb  Stuart  didn't  look  at  it  in  that  way  at 
all.  He  was  a  soldier,  while  we  were  just  be- 
ginning to  learn  how  to  be  soldiers.  These 
things  make  a  difference. 

We  hadn't  got  our  tents  pitched  when  he 
ordered  us  out  for  a  scouting  expedition  under 
his  personal  command. 

Our  army  lay  at  Winchester.  The  enemy 
was  at  Martinsburg,  twenty-two  miles  away. 
Stuart,  with  his  four  or  five  hundred  horsemen, 
lay  at  Bunker  Hill,  about  half-way  between  but 
a  little  nearer  to  the  enemy  than  to  his  sup- 
ports.    That  was  always  Stuart's  way. 

In  our  scouting  expedition  that  day,  we  had 
two  or  three  "  brushes  "  with  the  enemy  —  "  just 
to  get  us  used  to  it,"  Stuart  said. 

Finally  we  went  near  to  Martinsburg,  and 
came   upon   a  farmhouse.     The  farm  gave  no 


122  A  Breach  of  Etiquette 

appearance  of  being  a  large  one,  or  one  more 
than  ordinarily  prosperous,  yet  we  saw  through 
the  open  door  a  dozen  or  fifteen  "  farm  hands  " 
eating  dinner,  all  of  them  in  their  shirt-sleeves. 

Stuart  rode  up,  with  a  few  of  us  at  his  back, 
to  make  inquiries,  and  we  dismounted.  Just 
then  a  slip  of  a  girl,  —  not  over  fourteen,  I  should 
say — accompanied  by  a  thick-set,  young  bull- 
dog, with  an  abnormal  development  of  teeth, 
ran  up  to  us. 

She  distinctly  and  unmistakably  "  sicked"  that 
dog  upon  us.  But  as  the  beast  assailed  us,  the 
young  girl  ran  after  him  and  restrained  his 
ardor  by  throwing  her  arms  around  his  neck. 
As  she  did  so,  she  kept  repeating  in  a  low  but 
very  insistent  tone  to  us :  "  Make  'em  put  their 
coats  on !  Make  'em  put  their  coats  on  !  Make 
'em  put  their  coats  on  !  " 

Stuart  was  a  peculiarly  ready  person.  He 
said  not  one  word  to  the  young  girl  as  she  led 
her  dog  away,  but  with  a  word  or  two  he 
directed  a  dozen  or  so  of  us  to  follow  him  with 
cocked  carbines  into  the  dining-room.  There 
he  said  to  the  "  farm  hands"  :  "  Don't  you  know 
that  a  gentleman  never  dines  without  his  coat  ? 
Aren't  you  ashamed  of  yourselves  ?  And  ladies 
present,  too !  Get  up  and  put  on  your  coats, 
every  man  jack  of  you,  or  I'll  riddle  you  with 
bullets  in  five  seconds." 

They   sprang  first  of   all   into   the   hallway, 


A  Breach  of  Etiquette  1 2  3 

where  they  had  left  their  arms  ;  but  either  the 
bull-dog  or  the  fourteen-year-old  girl  had  taken 
care  of  that.  The  arms  were  gone.  Then  see- 
ing the  carbines  levelled,  they  made  a  hasty 
search  of  the  hiding-places  in  which  they  had 
bestowed  their  coats.  A  minute  later  they 
appeared  as  fully  uniformed,  but  helplessly  un- 
armed Pennsylvania  volunteers. 

They  were  prisoners  of  war  at  once,  without 
even  an  opportunity  to  finish  that  good  dinner. 
As  we  left  the  house  the  young  girl  came  up  to 
Stuart  and  said:  "Don't  say  anything  about 
it;  but  the  dog  wouldn't  have  bit  you.  He 
knows  which  side  we're  on  in  this  war." 

As  we  rode  away  this  young  girl  —  she  of  the 
bull-dog  —  cried  out:  "To  think  the  wretches 
made  us  give  'em  dinner !  And  in  their  shirt- 
sleeves, too  !  " 


THE   LADY   OF   THE   GREEN 
BLIND 

THE  house  looked  a  little  bit  odd,  but  we 
made  allowances  for  the  times,  although 
this  was  in  1861,  soon  after  the  battle  of  Ma- 
nassas. 

There  were  seven  windows  in  front,  and  they 
all  had  white  shades  except  one.  That  one  had 
a  dark  green  Holland  blind.  We  remarked  on 
the  fact  when  the  blind  was  put  up,  but  we 
thought  little  of  it  until  we  were  instructed  one 
day  to  watch  that  blind  at  night  and  report  its 
doings. 

There  was  a  Federal  picket  post  near  the 
house. 

We  reported  many  of  the  performances  of 
that  blind  without  any  visible  results.  But  one 
night  it  was  suddenly  drawn  entirely  down,  hav- 
ing before  been  rolled  entirely  to  the  top. 
When  that  was  reported  to  the  company's  head- 
quarters under  a  tree,  a  little  way  in  the  rear, 
the  captain  immediately  ordered  us  to  mount. 

We  rode  at  a  swinging  gallop  up  to  the  house, 
and  under  quietly  given  orders  seized  the  eleven 
horses  that  were  tied  in  the  grounds.  A 
124 


The  Lady  of  the  Green  Blind     125 

moment  later  a  force  of  dismounted  cavalrymen 
came  out  of  the  house  with  a  woman  in  charge. 
It  was  pitch  dark,  even  to  us.  To  men  right 
from  the  light,  and  standing  within  the  glare  of 
the  doorway,  the  night  must  have  been  abso- 
lutely blinding. 

We  could  have  shot  down  the  whole  detach- 
ment without  difficulty,  but  we  understood  in  a 
moment  that  there  was  a  woman  to  be  rescued, 
and  in  a  volley  her  danger  would  have  been  as 
great  as  theirs. 

We  waited  therefore  for  orders. 

Then  it  was  that  the  captain  invented  a  totally 
new  cavalry  manoeuvre,  with  a  marching  com- 
mand wholly  unknown  to  the  books  on  tactics. 
He  said  to  us  in  a  low,  quiet,  but  incisive  voice : 
"  Form  quickly  in  two  single  files ;  advance 
and  split  the  girl  out.  I'll  take  her  on  my 
crupper." 

It  was  a  pretty  manoeuvre,  and  as  Charlie 
rode  out  between  the  two  single  files  with  the 
young  woman  on  the  crupper,  we  cheered  quite 
as  lustily  as  we  fired.  Then  we  didn't  know  ex- 
actly what  to  do.  We  had  an  appreciation  of 
the  fact  that  Charlie  wanted  to  get  the  woman 
out  of  range  as  quickly  as  possible.  But  we 
also  had  a  realizing  sense,  drawn  from  experi- 
ence, of  Charlie  Irving's  extreme  reluctance  to 
ride  away  from  an  enemy  who  could  be  faced. 

It  was  Field  Mann,  the  orderly  sergeant,  who 


126     The  Lady  of  the  Green  Blind 

saw  the  right  way  out.  He  called  out  to  us,  in 
quite  unmilitary  language  :  "  Don't  retreat,  boys, 
Charlie's  sure  to  come  back  as  soon's  he's  got 
her  safe ;  meantime  we'll  fight  'em.  Form  in 
line  under  the  cherry  trees." 

We  had  them  at  a  disadvantage.  They  were 
still  in  the  glare  of  light  from  the  windows, 
while  we  were  in  the  darkness,  and  we  were 
sixty  mounted  men  to  eleven  cavalrymen,  whose 
horses  had  been  captured.  Moreover  we  had 
carbines,  and  they  had  none. 

By  the  time  we  had  made  an  alignment  under 
the  trees,  and  before  Field  Mann  could  give 
another  order,  the  captain  came  running  up  on 
foot,  leaped  into  the  saddle  of  one  of  the  cap- 
tured horses,  and  quickly  gave  a  command  that 
completely  surrounded  the  house. 

We  had  those  men  penned ;  but  just  then 
their  comrades  at  the  neighboring  picket  post 
discovered  that  there  was  trouble  on  hand,  and 
advanced  upon  us. 

It  was  an  exciting  fight  there  in  the  darkness 
and  under  the  trees,  so  exciting  that  Stuart 
quickly  sent  two  other  companies  to  our  rein- 
forcement. 

At  the  end  of  an  hour,  we  marched  back 
with  some  prisoners ;  the  rest  of  our  foes 
had  scattered  and  disappeared.  When  we  got 
to  the  camp-fires  behind  the  hills,  Charlie 
Irving  dismounted,  and  greeting  the  lady,  who 


The  Lady  of  the  Green  Blind     127 

was  laboriously  mending  a  torn  gown  with  a 
hairpin,  said :  "  I  hope  you  managed  to  ride 
Selim  ?  He's  a  demon  sometimes,  and  not  at 
all  courteous  to  ladies.  But  there  was  nothing 
for  it  but  to  trust  you  to  him."  She  murmured 
something  courteous  in  reply.  Then  turning 
with  blazing  eyes  to  the  Federal  officer  who 
had  been  in  command  of  the  party,  she  asked : 
"What  were  you  going  to  do  with  me,  if  I 
hadn't  been  rescued  ?  " 

He  replied  :  "  I  suppose  you  would  have  been 
hanged  as  a  spy." 

And  it  was  true. 

After  breakfast  the  next  day  —  I  remember 
that  breakfast  consisted  of  some  green  corn 
taken  from  a  neighboring  field  and  roasted  in 
the  ashes  with  the  husks  on,  and  by  the  way 
that's  the  best  way  to  cook  green  corn  —  we 
escorted  the  lady  back  to  her  home,  and  under 
Stuart's  orders  stationed  two  cavalry  companies 
in  front  as  a  guard. 

There  is  no  doubt,  I  suppose,  that  the  lady 
was  a  spy,  and  that  her  green  window  blind 
had  communicated  much  valuable  information. 

But  no  ;  there  was  no  courtship,  no  marriage, 
no  honeymoon,  no  romance,  to  follow.  The 
lady  was  forty-five,  if  a  day ;  and  besides  that, 
Irving  was  already  engaged  to  a  girl  down 
South. 


YOUNGBLOOD'S    LAST 
MORNING 

WE  were  all  well  used  to  seeing  men  shot, 
but  this  was  different. 

It  was  a  soft,  warm,  mellow  autumn  morn- 
ing. It  was  a  day  suggestive  of  all  gentleness. 
A  purple,  Indian-summer  haze  enveloped  the 
earthworks  and  the  camps.  Nature  had  issued 
an  invitation  to  peace  and  repose.  The  cannon 
were  not  at  work.  Nobody  on  either  side  had 
been  tempted  to  bombard  anybody  else.  Even 
the  mortars  and  the  sharp-shooters  were  still. 

It  was  not  the  kind  of  morning  for  the  bloody 
work  of  war. 

Yet  a  young  man  was  to  be  killed  within  the 
hour.  He  was  to  be  killed  deliberately,  in  cold 
blood,  by  sentence  of  a  court-martial,  and  with 
great  pomp  and  ceremony ;  and  nobody,  even 
in  his  heart,  could  say  nay  to  the  justice  of  the 
sentence. 

For  Youngblood  had  done  an  infamous  thing. 

There  were  many  desertions  to  the  enemy 
about  that  time.  The  war  was  manifestly  draw- 
ing to  a  close,  and  men  who  lacked  self-sacrific- 
128 


Youngblood's  Last  Morning       129 

ing  devotion  were  getting  tired  of  its  hardships 
and  privations.  In  order  to  stop  these  deser- 
tions, orders  had  been  issued  that  any  soldier 
arresting  another  in  the  act  of  going  to  the 
enemy  should  have  a  thirty  days'  furlough. 

Youngblood  was  on  picket  one  day  with 
another  man.  He  proposed  to  that  other  man 
that  they  both  should  desert,  and  they  started 
together  toward  the  enemy's  lines.  According 
to  Youngblood's  story,  it  was  his  purpose  to 
arrest  his  comrade,  and  thus  earn  a  furlough  at 
the  expense  of  the  other  fellow's  life.  Whether 
this  story  was  true  or  not  doesn't  much  matter. 
The  other  fellow  arrested  him. 

In  any  case,  he  deserved  to  pay  the  penalty 
he  did.  He  was  tried,  convicted,  and  sentenced. 
The  sentence  was  approved  by  all  the  authori- 
ties, including  the  war  department.  This  morn- 
ing it  was  to  be  carried  out. 

It  was  about  ten  o'clock,  Youngblood's  regi- 
ment was  formed  into  three  sides  of  a  hollow 
square.  Near  the  entrance  to  the  square,  on 
the  right,  rested  Youngblood's  coffin.  Beside 
it  was  Youngblood's  grave. 

Presently  an  ambulance  drove  up,  bearing 
the  prisoner  and  his  attendant  guards.  As  he 
stepped  lightly  and  lithely  from  the  ambulance, 
we  saw  him  to  be  a  fine  specimen  of  young 
manhood.  He  was  twenty-three  or  twenty-four 
years  of  age ;  tall,  well  built,  and  full  of  elastic 


130       Youngblood' s  Last  Morning 

vigor.  He  was  handsome,  too,  and  of  refined 
and  gentle  countenance. 

There  was  no  sign  of  flinching  in  him :  noth- 
ing that  denoted  the  coward  which  his  explana- 
tion of  his  crime  had  shown  him  to  be. 

It  seemed  something  more  than  a  pity  to  put 
a  fellow  like  that  to  death. 

He  took  his  place  in  front  of  the  guards  and 
just  in  rear  of  the  band,  and  the  dead  march 
began. 

He  walked  alone. 

Slowly,  and  with  cadenced  step,  the  proces- 
sion moved  around  inside  the  square.  And  as 
it  passed  me,  I  was  curious  to  observe  the  con- 
demned man's  behavior.  His  step  was  as  steady 
and  as  firm  as  that  of  any  man  in  the  guard.  I 
looked  at  his  hands  to  see  if  there  were  any 
convulsive  clutching  of  the  fingers.  There  was 
none.  I  doubt  if  any  man  in  all  that  regiment 
felt  so  calm  in  mind  or  so  well  poised  in  nerve 
as  Youngblood  looked. 

Having  completed  the  seemingly  endless 
march  around  the  three  closed  sides  of  the 
square,  the  procession  turned  to  the  right,  and 
crossed  its  open  end  to  the  point  of  execution. 

There  an  officer  stepped  forward  and  read 
to  Youngblood  the  findings  and  sentence  of  the 
court  which  had  condemned  him,  with  the 
formal  endorsements  approving  them  and  order- 
ing the  sentence  executed.     The  guard  which 


YoungbloocT s  Last  Morning       131 

had  the  prisoner  in  charge  divided  to  the  right 
and  left,  and  Youngblood  was  left  standing 
alone  in  front  of  his  coffin,  and  beside  his  open 
grave. 

At  the  word  of  command  he  knelt  upon  the 
coffin  and  folded  his  arms  across  his  chest. 
Again  at  the  word  of  command  twelve  soldiers 
stepped  out  in  front  of  him  with  guns  in  their 
hands.  Six  of  these  guns  carried  ball  cartridges, 
and  six  were  blank.  No  man  in  the  firing  squad 
was  permitted  to  know  whether  his  gun  had  a 
bullet  in  it  or  not. 

The  officer  in  command  spoke  scarcely  above 
his  breath,  but  so  hushed  was  the  time  that  his 
words  were  audible  to  the  three  thousand  men 
there  assembled,  as  he  said  to  each  alternate 
man:  "Fire  at  his  head,"  and  to  the  intervening 
man:  "Fire  at  his  chest."  Then  turning  his 
back,  which  was  perhaps  not  an  officer-like 
thing  to  do,  the  lieutenant  gave  in  a  husky 
voice  the  word  of  command. 

"Ready,  aim,  fire." 

There  was  a  sharp  crack  from  twelve  rifles 
fired  simultaneously.  There  was  a  whirr  and 
whistle  of  six  bullets  that  had  passed  through 
the  head  or  chest  of  the  doomed  man,  and 
hurtled  off  into  the  fields  beyond.  Army  rifles 
fire  with  tremendous  force. 

The  dead  man's  body  rose  to  its  feet  and  fell 
limply  forward. 


132        Yoitngblood 's  Last  Morning 

Five  minutes  later  all  that  was  left  of  Young- 
blood  was  buried  beneath  six  feet  of  earth. 

There  was  no  merriment  in  any  of  the  camps 
that  day,  or  the  next,  or  the  next.  Even  our 
scant  rations  were  not  much  relished  by  those 
of  us  who  had  witnessed  this  scene. 

And  yet,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning,  we  were 
all  well  used  to  seeing  men  killed. 


BILLY   GOODWIN 

I  NEVER  have  known  whether  Billy  Good- 
win was  a  brave  man  or  not. 

He  was  certainly  not  afraid  of  anything ;  but 
the  absence  of  fear  from  his  composition  was  so 
complete  that  I  was  always  in  doubt  whether 
he  was  entitled  to  credit  for  never  yielding  to 
that  emotion. 

His  fearlessness  seemed  like  the  color  of  his 
sandy  hair  and  his  pale  blue  eyes  —  something 
over  which  he  had  no  control. 

At  Cold  Harbor,  in  1864,  when  an  artillery 
duel  was  going  on,  plus  a  tremendous  sharp- 
shooter fire,  Billy,  with  his  back  to  the  enemy, 
lazily  lounged  upon  the  breastworks.  All  the 
rest  of  us  were  crouching  behind  them. 

I  remember  as  an  incident  that  he  was  eating 
a  sandwich.  It  was  composed  of  two  halves  of 
a  hard-tack  biscuit  and  a  slice  of  raw  pickled 
pork  —  his  entire  rations  for  the  day.  He  was 
carefully  holding  his  hand  under  his  chin,  in 
order  to  save  all  the  crumbs.  We  weren't 
wasting  crumbs  in  those  days. 
133 


134  Billy  Goodwin 

A  lieutenant,  who  had  already  been  men- 
tioned in  orders  for  gallantry,  cautiously  pushed 
up  his  head  to  peer  over  the  breastworks  on 
which  Goodwin  was  sitting.  Billy  placed  his 
hand  upon  the  prematurely  bald  head  of  the 
lieutenant,  shoved  him  down,  and  said  :  "  Keep 
below  the  dirt,  or  you'll  get  a  bullet  through 
your  billiard  ball.  Don't  you  know  this  is  no 
time  to  be  exposing  yourself? " 

I  have  elsewhere  celebrated  Billy.  In  doing 
so  I  have  suggested  that,  while  he  had  a  high 
sense  of  personal  duty,  he  had  no  sense  what- 
ever of  personal  danger. 

On  that  terrible  30th  of  August,  1864,  when 
the  mine  was  exploded  at  Petersburg,  Goodwin 
was  detailed  to  act  as  courier  for  General  Lee 
and  General  Beauregard. 

A  Northern  negro  soldier  had  broken  some- 
how out  of  the  crater  and  through  the  lines. 
He  rushed  madly  into  headquarters.  He  struck 
frantically  at  General  Lee  with  his  bayonet. 
General  Beauregard  parried  the  blow  with  his 
sword.  The  negro  turned  and  ran  out  of  the 
door.  Beauregard,  in  his  excitement,  called 
out  to  Goodwin,  "  Go  and  kill  that  man  !  " 

Stepping  quickly,  as  was  his  custom,  Billy 
gave  pursuit.  A  few  moments  later  he  re- 
turned. He  presented  himself  in  all  his  superb 
length  of  limb.  He  gave  the  military  salute  to 
General  Beauregard.     When  that  officer  asked  : 


Billy  Goodwin  135 

"  What  is  it,  orderly  ?  "  Billy  replied  :  "  I  beg 
respectfully  to  report  that  I  have  killed  that 
man  in  accordance  with  orders." 

That  was  Billy.  As  a  soldier  he  was  a  good 
kind.  He  obeyed  all  orders  without  question- 
ing them.  He  did  all  his  duties  as  he  under- 
stood them.  But,  as  I  have  said,  I  have  never 
been  able  to  determine  whether  he  was  really 
a  brave  man,  or  whether  he  was  merely  a  man 
so  constituted  as  to  be  insensible  to  personal 
danger. 

But  I  will  say  this  for  Billy,  which  may  help 
to  decide  this  point,  — 

We  were  marching  from  Spottsylvania  to 
Cold  Harbor.  We  marched  for  fifty-six  hours 
at  the  double  quick.  Now  and  then  we  had  to 
fight  at  the  quadruple  quick.  We  had  no  food. 
We  had  no  sleep.     We  had  no  rest. 

Near  the  end  of  this  tremendous  strain  Billy 
came  to  me  under  a  tree,  where  I  was  snatch- 
ing a  five  minutes'  repose.  He  said,  with  an 
air  of  great  mystery  :  "  I've  got  a  coon  for  my 
mess.  I  bought  it  of  a  nigger  back  there.  So 
I  don't  want  this  piece  of  corn-bread.  I  wish 
you'd  take  it.     I  know  you're  hungry." 

We  did  not  readily  accept  food  from  each 
other  in  those  days,  lest  we  starve  each 
other. 

I  struggled  to  resist  this  proffer,  but  Billy 
insisted  on  that  coon  as  satisfying  all  his  per- 


1 36  Billy  Goodwin 

sonal  wants.  At  last,  therefore,  I  accepted  the 
three  or  four  ounces  of  powder-grimed  corn- 
bread  which  he  pressed  upon  me. 

I  learned  afterwards  that  Billy  had  lied. 

There  wasn't  any  coon. 


MANASSAS 

I  CALL  it  Manassas. 
That  is  the  name  we  Southerners  gave  it. 
We  won  that  battle  more  completely  and  more 
conspicuously  than   any  other  battle  was  won 
by  either  side  during  the  Civil  War. 

It  is  the  right  of  the  victor  always  to  name 
the  action.  We  named  it  Manassas.  In  the 
North  it  is  called  Bull  Run. 

We  reached  Manassas  after  two  days  and 
nights  of  ceaseless  marching,  at  ten  o'clock  on 
the  evening  of  the  20th  of  July,  1861. 

We  knew  that  trouble  was  at  hand  ;  other- 
wise Stuart  would  not  have  swung  us  at  such 
a  breakneck  speed  across  the  mountains  from 
the  valley  to  this  point.  We  were  six  hundred 
strong. 

Six  hundred  young  Virginians,  cradled  in  the 
saddle,  and  who  had  shot  wild  turkeys  as  soon 
as  we  were  able  to  digest  them.  There  was 
another  battalion  of  cavalry  present,  under 
Colonel  Radford,  numbering  perhaps  three 
hundred  men.  But  the  story  had  gone  forth 
in  the  Northern  army  that  we  were  thirty  thou- 
J37 


1 38  Manassas 

sand  of  the  finest  horsemen  ever  known  since 
the  days  of  the  Mamelukes. 

That  story  had  its  part  in  creating  the  panic 
at  Manassas. 

I  believe  we  were  good  horsemen.  There 
were  men  among  us  who  might  have  given  the 
Mamelukes  points,  both  in  horsemanship  and 
in  the  use  of  the  sabre.  But  if  our  nine  hun- 
dred men  had  been  the  thirty  thousand  reported, 
we  should  have  thundered  into  Washington  on 
the  night  of  Sunday,  July  21,  1861,  and  would 
have  ended  the  war  then  and  there,  in  spite 
of  the  presidential  stupidity  which  feared  that 
"  aggression  "  might  anger  a  people  with  whom 
we  were  at  war. 

We  lay  that  night  in  an  open  field,  each  man 
having  his  horse  tethered  to  his  left  arm,  and 
each  man  booted,  spurred,  sabred,  and  pistolled 
for  instant  action. 

The  bugle  sounded  no  reveille  that  morning. 
A  shell  from  the  enemy's  camp,  which  fell  in 
the  midst  of  the  regiment,  saved  the  bugler  the 
trouble. 

With  a  laugh,  which  was  almost  a  chuckle, 
Stuart  called  out:  "That's  'boots  and  saddles,' 
boys,"  and  in  an  instant  we  were  on  our 
horses. 

The  first  great  battle  of  the  war  had  begun. 

It  was  not  until  noon,  or  nearly  that,  that  the 
cavalry  had  any  real  work  to  do.     I  didn't  look 


Manassas  1 39 

at  my  watch,  but  it  must  have  been  about  noon 
when  Stuart  swept  us  at  a  tremendous  pace 
through  a  regiment  or  two  of  Zouaves,  and  back 
again  over  the  same  ground.  I  saw  no  Zouaves 
for  the  reason  that  there  was  too  much  dust  to 
see  anything ;  but  it  was  understood  when  the 
charge  was  over,  that  we  had  driven  them  back. 
And  half  a  dozen  empty  saddles  in  our  own 
ranks  attested  the  fact  that  they  had  not  been 
driven  back  without  a  stubborn  and  manly  re- 
sistance. 

A  little  later,  we  cavalrymen  were  ordered 
up  to  the  support  of  some  batteries  that  had 
temporarily  run  out  of  ammunition.  Our  rep- 
utation as  Mamelukes  sufficed  at  that  point  to 
prevent  a  charge,  so  that  our  real  work  in  the 
battle  did  not  begin  until  the  panic  in  McDow- 
ell's army  set  in. 

Then  Stuart  rose  in  his  stirrups  and  shouted 
at  the  top  of  his  voice:  "They're  licked,  boys! 
They're  licked  !     They're  licked  !  " 

Then  hastily  he  rattled  off  orders.  The  sub- 
stance of  them  was  that  we  were  to  divide  the 
cavalry  into  squads  of  ten  and  twenty  men  each, 
and  proceed  at  once  in  pursuit. 

"  If  there  aren't  officers,  and  non-commis- 
sioned officers  enough,  let  anybody  command  a 
squad.      This  is  business." 

As  the  several  squads  started  at  a  gallop 
after  the   enemy,    Stuart   called   out   to   each  : 


1 40  Manassas 

"  Attack  any  force  you  find.  There  is  no  cohe- 
sion left  among  'em." 

In  that  command  he  struck  the  key-note  of 
the  whole  situation.  Seasoned  soldier  that  he 
was,  he  knew  that  without  cohesion,  soldiers 
are  helpless,  and  numbers  count  for  nothing. 

We  plunged  forward  across  every  ford  and 
along  every  road  that  led  from  Bull  Run  towards 
Centreville.  At  every  point  we  found  "  chaos 
come  again." 

A  squad  of  ten  men,  armed  only  with  sabres 
and  pistols,  but  backed  by  the  Mameluke  tradi- 
tion, would  call  out  to  eighty  or  a  hundred  fully 
armed  infantry :  "  Throw  down  your  arms,  or 
we'll  put  you  to  the  sword !  Throw  down  your 
arms,  or  we'll  put  you  to  the  sword  !  " 

The  panic-stricken  men  would  obey  the  order 
instantly,  disregarding  the  fact  that  with  a  single 
volley  they  might  have  swept  the  insolent  squad 
instantly  out  of  existence. 

It  was  not  merely  that  the  army  was  panic 
stricken.  It  was  encumbered  at  every  step  by 
a  multitude  of  embarrassing  picnickers,  —  a  mul- 
titude of  men  and  women  who  had  come  out 
from  Washington  to  see  us  exterminated  and  to 
join  in  a  triumphal  march  to  Richmond.  These 
people  had  brought  out  with  them  more  super- 
fluous provisions  than  our  army  had  eaten  for  a 
fortnight.  They  abandoned  their  luxuries  in 
the  middle  of   the   road   and   ran.     They   left 


Manassas  141 

champagne  enough  unopened  for  a  regiment  to 
swim  in.  They  fled  precipitately,  adding  at 
every  step  by  their  own  insensate  fear  to  the 
panic  that  had  already  overtaken  the  troops. 

Men  cut  horses  out  of  vehicles  that  held  help- 
less women,  and  madly  mounting  them  aban- 
doned their  charges  and  their  duties,  in  order 
to  escape  a  present  and  impending  danger  to 
themselves.  Fortunately  for  their  charges,  the 
Southerners  were  not  making  war  on  women. 

Every  woman  was  instantly  assured  of  her 
own  personal  safety.  Every  horse  that  was 
left  behind  was  hitched  at  once  to  a  vehicle, 
and  the  vehicle  loaded  with  women  was  started 
under  an  assurance  of  safe  conduct  towards 
Washington.  When  the  supply  of  abandoned 
horses  fell  short,  it  was  made  good  by  animals 
from  our  batteries,  and  now  and  then  by  the 
riderless  horse  of  one  of  the  Mamelukes  who 
had  received  a  mortal  wound. 

Along  the  roads  we  found  many  dead  men, 
for  whose  deaths  no  coroner  would  have  been 
able  to  account  —  men  utterly  destitute  of 
wounds,  who  had  died  clearly  either  of  fright, 
or  of  exhaustion,  or  of  both. 

At  Cub  Run,  an  ambulance  or  a  caisson  broke 
down  on  the  bridge  and  obstructed  it.  The 
obstruction  almost  instantly  caused  a  congestion 
of  two  or  three  thousand  panic-stricken  soldiers 
and  picnickers  on  the  hither  side  of  the  stream. 


142  Manassas 

Then  came  Kemper  with  his  guns.  He  was 
as  black  as  a  negro  with  powder  smoke.  His 
cannoneers  were  equally  begrimed.  From  the 
top  of  a  hill,  not  more  than  two  hundred 
yards  distant,  —  pistol-shot  range,  —  he  opened 
fire  with  canister.  The  effect  upon  the  crowd 
was  instantaneous  and  almost  startling.  Its 
constituent  members  dispersed  as  a  covey  of 
partridges  does  when  a  shot-gun  is  fired  into  its 
lurking  place.  Some  of  them  ran  up  the  creek. 
Some  of  them  ran  down  the  creek.  Some  of 
them  plunged  into  the  creek,  and  crossed  or 
drowned,  as  the  case  may  be. 

It  was  just  then  that  Stuart  rode  up  and 
cried  out :  "  We'll  go  into  Washington  to-night, 
boys.  And  my  headquarters  will  be  at  Will- 
ard's  Hotel." 

It  was  just  then  also  that  couriers  came,  bear- 
ing the  paralyzing  presidential  order  to  stop  the 
pursuit  at  Cub  Run. 

It  was  just  then  that  the  despondency  of  the 
Mamelukes  began. 

A  little  later  it  rained. 


MY   LAST    NIGHT   ON    PICKET 

MY  period  of  service  in  the  cavalry  was 
about  to  expire.  I  was  not  tired  of  the 
cavalry  service  ;  on  the  contrary,  I  was  very 
much  in  love  with  it.  Any  full-blooded  man 
must  have  been  so  under  such  leadership  as 
Stuart's. 

But  for  reasons  pertaining  to  Joe,  I  had 
sought  and  obtained  a  transfer  to  the  artillery. 

Joe  was  just  sixteen. 

The  infantry  regiment  in  which  he  had  gone 
out  had  been  so  cut  to  pieces  in  a  fierce  fight 
that  it  was  dissolved.  Joe  and  a  bullet-riddled 
flag  were  about  all  there  was  left  of  it. 

Therefore  Joe  had  enlisted  in  a  battery  of 
artillery.  He  was  as  brave  a  fellow  as  is  made, 
and  as  cantankerous  and  self-assertive  as  a 
brave  boy  is  apt  to  be.  I  felt  it  necessary  to 
be  with  him  to  keep  him  from  being  unneces- 
sarily killed  or  court-martialled,  and  to  exercise 
over  him  that  mature,  paternal  influence  which 
the  superior  age  of  twenty-one  justified. 

This  was  my  last  night  of  cavalry  service. 
It  was  late  autumn  in  1861.  The  company  was 
ordered  on  picket  at  Fairfax  Court  House.  The 
143 


144        My  Last  Night  on  Picket 

enemy  was  very  urgent  just  then,  and  gave  us 
a  good  deal  of  trouble  on  the  picket  lines. 

I  was  ordered  to  a  post  underneath  a  very 
broad  and  low  spreading  tree,  so  that  when  I 
sat  upon  my  horse  I  was  not  visible  from  the 
thicket  in  front,  and  would  not  have  been  even 
if  it  had  been  broad  daylight. 

That  thicket  was  full  of  sharp-shooters,  and 
when  I  went  on  post  about  seven  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  I  was  instructed  to  preserve  absolute 
silence  in  self-protection,  and  warned  that  it 
would  probably  not  be  possible  to  relieve  me 
until  morning. 

My  mare  was  a  restless  creature  at  ordinary 
times,  but  she  had  learned  the  whole  art  of 
picket  duty.  If  I  had  been  anywhere  else,  she 
would  have  champed  the  bit,  and  pawed  the 
ground,  and  snorted  in  her  restlessness.  Stand- 
ing there  at  night,  with  a  bullet  whistling  over 
her  head  every  minute  or  two,  she  was  as  still 
as  the  traditional  mouse. 

I  sat  there  all  night  on  her  back  with  pistols 
drawn,  and  in  a  silence  such  as  nobody  but  a 
picket  thus  placed  ever  maintains. 

Just  as  the  day  was  dawning,  or  rather  just 
as  the  gray  in  the  eastern  sky  began  to  suggest 
the  possibility  of  dawn,  a  sergeant  crawling  on 
his  belly  approached  me  from  the  rear.  In  a 
whisper  I  called  out,  "Who  goes  there?"  He, 
also  in  a  whisper,  let  me  know  his  identity.     He 


My  Last  Night  on  Picket        145 

had  come  to  order  my  withdrawal  from  the 
post. 

Not  until  we  had  reached  a  point  a  hundred 
yards  in  the  rear  was  anything  further  said. 
There  I  found  the  company  drawn  up  in  line 
with  Charlie  Irving  at  its  head. 

"Many  shots  from  the  thicket?"  asked 
Charlie. 

"Two  or  three  to  the  minute,"  I  answered, 
"throughout  the  night." 

"All  right,"  he  replied,  "we'll  scoop  those 
fellows  in ;  they're  getting  to  be  obnoxious." 

Then  in  a  low  tone  he  told  us  precisely  what 
we  were  to  do,  and  we  were  to  do  it  without 
further  orders.  He  was  to  lead,  of  course,  but 
he  wanted  to  give  as  few  commands  as  possible, 
in  order  to  make  his  movement  successful. 

Silently  we  moved  off  over  the  soft  turf  to 
the  left.  Crossing  the  road  below  the  thicket 
we  struck  a  gallop  and  quickly  surrounded  the 
space  occupied  by  the  sharp-shooters.  It  was 
the  work  of  but  a  few  minutes  to  close  in  upon 
and  capture  them.  Two  of  our  saddles  were 
emptied  in  the  operation,  and  five  of  the  sharp- 
shooters were  left  unburied  in  the  brush;  the 
rest  we  took  with  us  to  headquarters,  another 
company  having  replaced  us  on  picket. 

Among  the  prisoners  was  one  little  fellow, 
apparently  not  over  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of 
age.     His  features  were  clear  cut  and  delicate 


146        My  Last  Night  on  Picket 

and  his  clothing  was  worn  as  if  it  had  belonged 

to  somebody  else. 

When  we  had  got  well  to  the  rear  and  the 

daylight  was   broad,  Charlie    Irving   looked  at 

the  little  fellow  and  said :  "  How  old  are  you, 

my  boy  ? " 

"Twenty-two,"  he  replied,  "but  I'm  a  girl." 
That  girl  was  sent  back  under  a  flag  of  truce. 

We  didn't  know  what  else  to  do  with  her. 


GRIFFITH'S  CONTINUED  STORY 

IT  was  in  the  early  summer  of  1864.  We 
were  in  the  trenches  at  Spottsylvania. 

It  had  been  raining  continuously  all  day, 
with  now  and  then  a  heavy  downpour,  just  to 
remind  us  that  a  little  rain  ought  not  to  matter 
to  old  soldiers.  By  the  use  of  fragments  of  fence 
rail  and  such  other  sticks  as  we  could  secure 
to  stand  upon,  we  managed  to  avoid  sinking 
below  our  ankles  into  the  soft,  red,  Virginian 
mud. 

It  was  a  little  after  two  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, but  we  were  all  awake  and  on  duty.  For 
it  was  not  General  Grant's  purpose  at  that  time 
to  allow  us  much  of  repose.  We  had  stood  in 
the  trenches  and  in  the  rain  all  day,  and  we 
must  stand  in  the  trenches  and  in  the  rain  all 
night,  and  as  much  longer  as  it  might  please 
the  enemy  to  keep  us  there. 

The  night  was  one  of  the  blackest  I  have 
ever  known.  There  was  no  possibility  of  send- 
ing couriers  anywhere,  and  all  orders  had,  there- 
fore, to  be  passed  from  mouth  to  mouth  up  and 
down  the  lines. 

Every  few  minutes  a  great  downpour  of  buck- 
147 


148         Griffith's  Continued  Story 

etfuls  would  come ;  and,  worse  still,  every  now 
and  then  the  enemy  would  rush  forward  in  the 
darkness  and  come  upon  us  at  pistol-shot  range 
without  notice. 

It  was  Ulysses  S.  Grant  we  were  fighting, 
and  that  was  the  line  on  which  he  was  going 
to  "fight  it  out,  if  it  took  all  summer." 

We  felt  the  need  of  entertainment,  so  some- 
body called  out  to  a  sergeant :  "  Tell  us  a 
story." 

"No,  no,"  said  Johnny  Garrett,  "let  Griffith 
tell  a  story,  for  he  never  finishes,  and  this  is 
a  long  night." 

The  suggestion  was  applauded  and  insisted 
upon.  Whether  Griffith  blushed  or  not,  it  was 
much  too  dark  to  see ;  but  after  a  little  chaff- 
ing he  consented  to  tell  the  story.  Just  as  he 
began  Billy  Goodwin,  who  always  wanted  to 
gamble  on  everything,  offered  to  bet  three  to 
one  that  he  would  never  finish. 

"  Shut  up,  Goodwin,"  said  Johnny  Garrett, 
"and  let  him  begin,  anyhow.  If  he  don't  get 
through  by  the  middle  of  the  night,  I'll  nego- 
tiate the  bet  with  you." 

Thereupon  Griffith  began. 

"  Well,  'taint  much  of  a  story  —  only  a  bear 
story." 

"Bet  two  to  one  he  never  gets  to  the  bear," 
said  the  incorrigible  Goodwin. 

"Be  quiet,  will  you?"  cried  some  one  at  the 


Griffith's  Continued  Story         149 

right  of  the  company.  The  man  next  to  him 
mistook  this  adjuration  for  a  command  sent 
down  the  line ;  so,  to  the  astonishment  of  every- 
body to  the  left  of  us,  the  word  was  passed  from 
mouth  to  mouth :  "Be  quiet,  will  you !  Be 
quiet,  will  you  !     Be  quiet,  will  you  !  " 

"Well,"  said  Griffith,  "'twas  about  six  year 
ago,  or  maybe  seven.  No,  lemme  see  —  'twas 
the  same  year  that  Jim  Coffee  married  Mi- 
randy  Adams.  Must  have  been  eight  year 
ago,  I  s'pose." 

Just  then  came  the  order  down  the  line : 
"  Perfect  silence  !     Enemy  advancing  !  " 

The  next  minute  a  line  of  bayonets  broke 
out  of  the  fog  in  front  of  us,  and  a  flaring  fire 
blazed  forth  in  our  faces.  The  charge  upon  us 
was  a  determined  one,  and  for  full  three  min- 
utes it  required  all  our  efforts  to  repel  it.  After 
that  the  artillery  silenced  all  conversation  by 
pouring  a  shower  of  shot  and  shell  into  the 
retiring  assailants. 

"  Still  ready  to  make  that  bet,"  said  Billy 
Goodwin.  But  Griffith  began  again  undaunted. 
He  was  a  phlegmatic  person,  whose  mind  was 
never  driven  from  its  not  very  large  purposes  by 
any  shock  —  even  that  of  a  shower  of  canister. 

"Well,  as  I  wuz  a-sayin',  it  wuz  about  six  or 
eight  year  ago  —  it  don't  really  matter,  I  s'pose, 
how  long  ago  it  wuz  —  " 

"  No,"  said  Billy  Goodwin,  "  let  her  rip." 


150         Griffiths  Continued  Story 

"Well,  as  I  wuz  a-sayin'  —  "  Just  then  the 
enemy  charged  again. 

Griffith  had  captured  a  Henry  rifle  two  days 
before,  in  the  battle  of  the  Wilderness,  and  it 
was  loaded  with  fourteen  ball  cartridges.  With 
that  deliberation  which  characterized  him  in 
everything,  he  delivered  those  fourteen  shots 
in  the  face  of  the  enemy,  who  by  that  time 
had  retired.  Then  he  turned  and  began  to  fill 
the  magazine  of  his  rifle  again,  saying :  "  Well, 
you  see,  as  I  wuz  a-sayin',  Peter  Coffee  he  taken 
a  cawntract  for  a  bridge  over  Tye  River.  Now 
Peter  always  pertended  that  he  knew  how  to 
lay  out  bridge  work.  Of  course  I  knew  better. 
I'd  been  to  Fletcher  Massie's  school  with  him, 
and  I  knew  just  how  little  'rithmetic  he  knew. 
Fletch,  he  carried  me  through  the  rule  o'  three, 
and  you  can't  lay  out  bridge  work  till  you've 
bin  through  the  rule  o'  three." 

The  day  was  dawning,  and  just  then  came  an 
order  for  us  to  move  to  the  right,  the  extreme 
right,  four  or  five  miles  away.  We  marched  at 
once.  Grant  was  making  his  celebrated  move 
by  the  left  flank. 

When  we  got  into  position,  it  was  necessary 
to  throw  up  such  earthworks  as  we  could  with 
our  bayonets,  using  fence  rails  for  revetments. 
This  occupied  us  during  most  of  the  day,  and 
scattered  as  we  were,  we  were  not  able  to  listen 
to  the  remainder  of  Griffith's  story. 


GriffitJis  Continued  Story         151 

That  afternoon,  to  our  surprise,  we  received  a 
ration  of  three-quarters  of  a  pound  of  flour  to 
each  man.  When  we  had  baked  it,  I  hap- 
pened to  go  by  Tom  Booker's  position  and  saw 
him  eating  the  entire  cake.  Tom  looked  at  me 
pitifully  as  I  remonstrated  with  him  for  eating 
three  days'  rations  in  advance,  and  he  said  with 
tears  in  his  voice  if  not  in  his  eyes  :  "  I  know  it, 
but  I'm  go'n'  t'  fill  my  stomach  once,  if  I  starve 
for  it.     I  wish  I  was  a  woman  or  a  baby." 

A  few  minutes  later  came  the  order  to  move ; 
our  battery  was  at  that  time  unhorsed.  It  had 
been  planned  to  leave  it  in  the  rear,  because  its 
guns  could  not  be  moved  for  lack  of  horses,  but 
with  one  voice  the  men  had  demanded  the  privi- 
lege of  taking  rifles  and  going  with  the  battalion 
as  sharp-shooters. 

On  this  march  the  battalion  was  the  rear 
guard  of  the  army,  and  our  rifle-armed  battery 
was  the  rear  guard  of  the  battalion. 

For  fifty-six  hours  we  marched  without  food 
or  sleep,  pausing  every  fifteen  minutes  to  fight 
awhile,  and  then  double-quicking  to  catch  up. 

There  was  no  chance  for  Griffith  in  all  this. 
But  when  we  got  to  Cold  Harbor,  and  went  into 
the  works,  Billy  Goodwin  at  a  favorable  moment 
insisted  that  he  should  resume  his  story. 

"You  see  I've  got  three  bets  on  it,"  said  Billy. 

Just  then  a  grape-shot  passed  through  George 
Campbell's  foot,  and  distracted  our  attention  for 


152         GriffitJis  Continued  Story 

a  time.  Then  came  General  Field,  who  ordered 
us  to  burn  a  barn  in  front  that  was  full  of 
sharp-shooters.  The  first  two  or  three  shots 
from  the  battalion  did  the  business.  The  sharp- 
shooters ran  with  all  their  might  across  a  thou- 
sand yards  of  space,  while  we  poured  upon 
them  the  sharpest  rifle  fire  we  could  deliver. 
Some  of  them  got  to  cover,  and  some  of  them 
didn't. 

It  was  not  till  we  moved  to  Bottom's  Bridge 
that  Griffith  had  a  chance  to  resume  his  story. 
There  we  were  all  sick  from  having  eaten  boiled 
potato  vines,  for  lack  of  other  food.  Being  too 
ill  to  go  to  sleep,  we  demanded  a  continuation 
of  the  story. 

"Well,  as  I  wuz  a-sayin',"  said  Griffith,  "I'd 
gone  clean  through  the  rule  o'  three  in  Fletch 
Massie's  school,  and  Peter  Coffee  he  knew  it. 
As  I  told  yuh,  he'd  taken  the  cawntract  to  lay 
out  this  bridge  work ;  so  he  got  his  wife  to  write 
to  me  to  come  up  and  do  the  'rithmetic.  Well, 
just  as  I  wuz  startin'  up,  Bill  Linsey  says  to  me,  — 
you  know  he  kept  a  store  down  there  at  Arring- 
ton,  he  says  to  me,  says  he,  '  Griffith,  there's 
a  runlet  o'  cider  that's  got  twenty  gallon  in  it. 
Can  you  lif  it?'  I  says,  'Yes,  I  can  lif  it  and 
drink  out  o'  the  bung,  if  you'll  let  me  drink  es 
much  es  I  please.'  I  lifted  it  and  took  a  big 
swallow  of  the  sweet  stuff,  then  I  says,  '  I  can 
carry  it  up  the  mountain,'  says  I,  and  he  says, 


Griffiths  Continued  Story         153 

says  he,  '  On  your  back  ? '  says  he,  an'  I  says, 
'Yes,  on  my  back,'  says  I.  An'  he  says,  says 
he,  'Well,  you  can  have  it  ef  you'll  agree  to 
carry  it  up  the  mountain  on  your  back,  and  not 
take  no  lift  frum  nobody.'  " 

Just  then  a  battery,  three  thousand  yards 
away,  opened  on  us,  and  we  had  to  run  to 
cover,  every  man  of  us  with  his  hands  on  his 
stomach,  in  physical  memory  of  the  potato 
vines.  Our  guns  were  not  in  position,  and  all 
we  could  do  was  to  ensconce  ourselves  behind 
big  trees.  As  the  artillery  fire  kept  up,  Gen- 
eral Alexander  rode  to  this  point  of  the  lines 
and  ordered  up  three  batteries  of  rifled  can- 
non ;  by  the  time  they  had  finished  their  little 
controversy  with  the  enemy,  we  had  recovered 
from  the  potato  tops  sufficiently  to  go  to  sleep. 
So  Griffith's  story  was  to  be  "  continued  in  our 
next." 

Our  "next"  came  only  after  we  got  to  Peters- 
burg. There  our  battery  took  charge  of  the 
mortars  of  the  army.  Griffith  was  one  of  the 
men  I  selected  when  asked  to  volunteer  for  a 
particularly  perilous  mortar  service.  He  might 
or  might  not  be  able  to  tell  a  story,  but  he  could 
stand  fire  as  well  as  any  man  I  ever  knew. 

About  four  o'clock  one  morning,  when  we 
had  been  engaged  in  a  fierce  bombardment  all 
night,  the  fire  ceased  for  a  time,  and  Billy 
Goodwin  demanded  the  rest  of  that  bear  story. 


154         Griffith's  Continued  Story 

"  You  see  I've  got  seven  bets  on  that  story," 
said  Billy,  "  and  I  don't  want  to  win  any  man's 
money  unfairly.  One  bet  is  that  he  won't  ever 
get  to  the  bear,  and  I  don't  want  to  take  any 
man's  money  without  givin'  him  a  chance." 

"Well,  wait  a  minute,"  I  replied,  "till  I  start 
up  the  fire ;  we've  got  to  have  some  breakfast." 

The  fire  was  out. 

"  Somebody  must  go  up,"  I  said,  "  to  the  next 
fort  and  get  a  chunk  of  fire.  It  won't  do  to  get 
fire  by  shooting  a  mortar,"  —  which  was  our 
usual  way,  —  "  because  if  we  do  that,  we'll  start 
this  bombardment  again." 

"  I'll  go,"  said  Griffith,  "  and  then  I'll  tell  the 
rest  of  that  story." 

There  was  a  fearful  hail  of  bullets  between 
the  two  forts.  The  cannon  were  silent,  but  the 
musketry  fire  was  incessant.  Griffith  started 
off,  crouching  as  he  went  up  the  path  so  as  to 
expose  as  little  as  possible  of  his  person. 

That  was  the  last  I  ever  saw  of  him. 

As  he  was  borne  off  on  the  litter,  he  sent 
word  to  me  that  he  "  hoped  I  hadn't  any  bets 
on  that  bear  story." 


A   CHEERFUL   SUPPER   OF 
CHEERS 

AS  Commissary  it  was  Haskell's  business  to 
see  to  it  that  we  had  plenty  to  eat;  but 
the  seven  days'  fights  below  Richmond  were  on, 
and  Haskell  was,  first  of  all,  a  fighter,  —  a  thing 
uncommon  in  Commissaries  and  Quartermasters. 

Instead  of  attending  to  his  pork  and  meal 
wagons  in  the  rear,  he  went  to  the  front. 

There  he  was  active  in  a  degree  that  com- 
manded the  respect  of  his  general.  He  inter- 
ested himself  so  much  in  the  movements  of 
troops,  and  in  the  controversy  with  the  enemy, 
that  he  forgot  all  about  the  wagons. 

In  this  service  he  had  his  right  arm  shot  off 
by  a  cannon-ball. 

When  night  came,  and  we  wanted  something 
to  eat,  there  was  a  good  deal  of  growling  be- 
cause we  had  nothing.  But  when  the  story 
was  told  of  how  our  Commissary  had  fought, 
and  how  he  had  lost  an  arm  in  the  fighting,  a 
fellow  with  more  humor  than  appetite  got  up 
and  cried :  "  I  move  that  we  sup  on  three  cheers 
and  a  tiger  for  the  Commissary  that  fights." 

The  three  cheers  were  given. 
*55 


156       A  Cheerful  Supper  of  Cheers 

As  soon  as  his  wound  was  healed,  Haskell  was 
made  a  major  and  placed  in  command  of  the 
battalion. 

There  may  have  been  many  better  Commis- 
saries than  Haskell,  but  there  were  no  better 
fighting  majors. 


HOW  THE  TAR  HEELS  STUCK 

THE  sergeant-major  sat  there  on  his  horse 
in  the  drenching  rain.  There  was  noth- 
ing to  do  but  to  endure.  The  three  days  of 
fighting  in  the  Wilderness  in  that  early  summer 
of  1864,  and  the  three  nights  of  sleeplessness 
had  considerably  undone  his  nerves. 

But  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  realized 
that  he  had  a  hope  at  least  for  an  oppor- 
tunity. He  had  a  lieutenant's  command.  He 
hoped  for  a  chance  to  make  himself  a  lieutenant, 
in  fact.  With  two  guns,  twenty-six  men,  and 
twenty-four  horses  under  his  command,  and 
wholly  detached  from  his  battery,  he  had  hope, 
that  gray  foggy  morning,  that  he  might  have  an 
opportunity.  Yet  here  he  was,  standing  behind  a 
hill,  soaking  wet,  and  with  no  apparent  prospect. 

Three  times  the  infantry  had  been  ordered 
forward  to  the  top  of  that  hill.  Three  times 
they  had  been  swept  away  as  with  a  broom. 

The  hill  was  clearly  untenable. 

Then  came  General  Alexander. 

"  Have  you  nerve,  courage,  backbone  ?  Do 
you  want  an  opportunity  ?  " 

The  sergeant-major  answered,  "Yes." 
i57 


158        How  the   Tar  Heels  Stuck 
"  Then  take  your  guns  to  the  top  of  that  hill 

and  STAY  THERE." 

The  sergeant-major  gave  the  necessary  orders, 
and  advanced  at  once,  feeling  that  he  and  his 
men  were  lambs  sent  to  the  slaughter. 

When  he  appeared  on  top  of  the  hill,  twenty 
batteries  and  ten  thousand  riflemen  opened  upon 
him.  But  his  orders  were  to  "  stay  there,"  and 
the  sergeant-major  wanted  to  be  a  lieutenant. 

His  horse  sank  under  him  at  the  first  fire. 
His  men  went  down  like  grass  before  the 
scythe. 

But  he  STAYED  THERE. 

About  that  time  a  North  Carolina  general 
rode  up  to  his  brigade  and  called  aloud :  "  Men, 
are  you  going  to  allow  these  guns  to  be  cap- 
tured ?  They  say  we  North  Carolinians  have 
tar  on  our  heels  ;  let's  show  them  that  tar  sticks. 
Forward  !     March !  " 

Five  minutes  later  that  hill  was  occupied  by 
three  thousand  North  Carolinians,  the  tar  on 
whose  heels  STUCK.  Half  a  dozen  more  bat- 
teries were  ordered  up,  and  the  young  sergeant- 
major  was  directed  to  move  his  guns  by  hand 
to  the  rear. 

By  hand.  Because  of  his  twenty-four  horses 
only  two  remained  alive ;  while  there  were  only 
thirteen  left  out  of  his  twenty-six  men  to  han- 
dle the  guns  by  hand.  This  is  what  we  called 
"  life  "  in  the  Confederate  army. 


"LITTLE    LAMKIN'S    BATTERY" 

FOR  twenty-four  hours  I  had  had  a  man  on 
my  mind. 

He  had  been  court-martialled  and  was  sen- 
tenced to  be  shot.     He  was  in  the  guardhouse. 

I  know  of  no  good  reason  why  I  should  have 
objected  to  his  execution ;  he  certainly  deserved 
all  that  he  was  to  get.  But  I  had  been  his 
counsel  before  the  court-martial,  and  it  is  never 
a  pleasant  thing  for  a  lawyer  to  have  his  client 
executed. 

He  belonged  officially  to  me.  I  had  assumed 
a  responsibility  for  him,  and  I  felt  that  it  would 
not  be  fully  discharged  if  he  should  be  led  out 
and  shot. 

I  had  known  Beavers  for  a  very  brief  time ; 
but  as  his  counsel  I  had  learned  much  from  him 
in  confidence  as  to  his  career.  He  was  a  person 
of  elective  affinities.  It  was  his  habit  to  desert. 
He  had  served  on  both  sides  and  in  many 
capacities.  He  always  fought  well  on  which- 
ever side  he  might  happen  to  be  serving.  As  a 
gambler,  he  always  "  played  his  game  for  all  it 
was  worth." 

Why  he  had  deserted  back  and  forth  in  this 
»59 


160        "Little  Lamkiris  Battery" 

way  without  any  cogent  reason,  I  never  knew. 
I  used  to  think  sometimes  that  he  had  done  so 
at  first  just  to  try  how  a  new  style  and  color  of 
uniform  might  suit  his  particular  kind  of  beauty. 
His  beauty  was  not  in  itself  conspicuous. 

I  learned  from  him  incidentally  that  his 
various  reasons  for  desertion  from  one  side 
to  the  other  had  not  been  of  a  kind  that  would 
have  controlled  the  action  of  a  less  fastidious 
man. 

On  one  occasion  he  had  deserted  because 
he  smelt  mutton  from  the  camp-kettles  of  the 
enemy.     He  had  a  predilection  for  mutton. 

I  learned  that  he  returned  to  us  once,  because 
one  night,  when  he  was  not  quite  himself,  a 
comrade  had  put  him  to  bed  and  reversed  the 
order  of  his  blankets.  Beavers  explained  to 
me  with  great  particularity  that  a  certain  gray 
blanket  had  been  placed  on  top  of  a  certain 
brown  one.  He  could  not  be  expected  to  re- 
main with  a  regiment  under  such  conditions. 

At  last  he  had  been  caught  in  the  act  of  de- 
serting. He  had  been  tried,  and,  in  spite  of  such 
legal  acumen  as  I  could  bring  to  bear,  had  been 
convicted,  sentenced,  and  the  next  day  but  one 
was  to  be  shot. 

Now  that  he  was  sure  to  die,  he  seemed  to 
make  no  more  of  the  fact  than  of  any  other 
indifferent  thing.  I  do  not  mean  that  he  was 
careless  of  his  fate.     He  took  everything  seri- 


"Little  Lamkiiis  Battery"        161 

ously.  But  facts  were  to  him  facts,  and  he  did 
not  worry  over  them.  He  did  not  think  it 
worth  while. 

So  when  he  was  sentenced  to  death,  he  ad- 
justed his  blankets  in  the  proper  order  so  that 
he  might  not  have  a  nightmare,  and  slept  the 
sleep  of  the  contented. 

With  all  my  contempt  for  Beavers  I  was 
sorry  that  he  was  to  die.  There  was  something 
in  the  reckless  character  of  the  man  that  ap- 
pealed to  me.  Something  that  made  me  feel 
that  it  was  a  pity  that  this  abundant  life  should 
be  extinguished  by  a  rifle  shot. 

I  had  been  thinking  all  night.  I  had  thought 
of  every  argument  in  his  favor.  I  had  searched 
my  mind  to  see  if  any  point  had  been  neglected. 
Early  in  the  night  I  had  gone  to  Beavers,  and 
asked  him  for  the  aid  of  suggestion  —  sugges- 
tion that  might  lead  to  information.  But  here 
again  his  habits  balked  me.  He  said :  "  I'm 
gambling  in  this  case  on  your  brains." 

I  might  myself  have  been  willing  to  do  that, 
but  I  was  gambling  with  Beavers' s  life  for  a 
stake. 

Beavers  was  of  course  just  that  kind  of  man, 
whom  a  self-respecting  person  feels  it  his  duty 
to  despise ;  but  somehow  I  could  not  quite  de- 
spise Beavers.  His  coolness  appealed  to  me 
strongly.  His  bravado  seemed  a  sort  of  brav- 
ery.    His  readiness  to  meet  the  consequences, 


1 62        "Little  Lamkhis  Battery" 

and  pay  the  penalties  of  his  own  misdeeds,  was 
a  thing  hard  to  distinguish  from  heroism. 

He  had  no  principles,  of  course.  He  did  not 
pretend  to  have  any.  But  he  had  certain  meth- 
ods of  thought  which  seemed  to  serve  him  in 
lieu  of  principles. 

It  was  just  before  dawn.  I  had  not  slept. 
As  I  lay  in  my  tent  with  the  flaps  thrown  back, 
all  that  was  discernible  was  the  rather  spectral- 
looking  tented  city  with  its  precise  white  rows. 
I  had  become  so  nervous,  staring  through  the 
dark  at  the  place  where  I  knew  the  tent  pole  to 
be,  that  at  last  I  turned  out  for  good.  I  tight- 
ened my  belt.  It  was  our  habit  to  sleep  in  our 
clothes  —  for  reasons. 

The  first  gray  of  the  morning  touched  the 
camp,  and  looking  down  the  row  I  saw  a 
fragile  figure  moving  from  one  tent  to  another, 
and  pausing  occasionally  in  uncertainty.  At 
first  I  could  not  be  certain  whether  it  was  a 
woman  or  not.  Finally  the  figure  straightened 
up  and  stood  looking  towards  the  guardhouse ; 
it  was  that  of  a  woman. 

I  had  not  seen  a  woman  in  two  months. 

The  camp  was  silent  with  that  quietude  that 
is  so  impressive  just  before  the  dawn. 

After  staring  at  the  guardhouse  for  a 
moment,  while  I  stood  staring  at  her,  the 
woman  turned  her  eyes  and  we  stood  looking 
at   each   other.     After   halting   a  moment  she 


"Little  Lamkins  Battery"         16 


o 


came  staggering  up  the  narrow  lane  between 
the  two  rows  of  tents,  making  a  peculiar, 
nervous  movement  with  her  hands,  but  saying 
nothing.  She  stood  for  a  few  moments  a  little 
way  from  the  tent  door,  clasping  and  unclasp- 
ing her  hands. 

I  saw  that  she  was  ill.  She  reeled  up  against 
the  tent  pole,  and  would  have  fallen  had  I  not 
caught  her  by  the  arm.  I  seated  her  on  a  log, 
all  the  seat  there  was.  After  a  moment  she 
revived  a  little,  and  said  in  a  faint  voice, 
"  Beavers." 

At  that  moment  reveille  sounded.  The 
woman  was  too  evidently  ill  for  me  to  leave 
her.  I  sent  a  sergeant  to  attend  the  roll-call. 
I  directed  our  cook  to  provide  the  woman  with 
coffee  and  food. 

Then  I  questioned  her  a  little.  She  had 
walked  twenty-two  miles  over  railroad  ties. 

She  was  Beavers's  wife. 

She  said  to  me:  "  You  are  his  counsel,  I 
believe  ? " 

"Yes,"  I  replied,  "and  I  have  done  every- 
thing I  could  to  save  him." 

"  No,  you  have  not,"  she  answered.  "  You 
have  not  made  the  point  that  he  was  never 
legally  enlisted  as  a  soldier,  I'll  warrant!  He's 
over  forty-five  and  can't  be  conscribed.  He 
was  pardoned  out  of  the  penitentiary  on  condi- 
tion that  he  should  enlist,  but  the  court-martial 


164        "Little  Lamkins  Battery" 

had  no  proof  of  that.  There's  nothing  what- 
ever to  show  that  he's  a  soldier ;  and  if  he  ain't 
a  soldier,  he  can't  be  punished  for  desertion. 
I've  come  to  tell  you,  for  he  would  never  think 
of  it." 

I  jumped  to  my  feet.  I  called  a  sentinel, 
and  told  him  to  take  the  woman  to  the  guard- 
house and  make  her  as  comfortable  as  possible. 
I  mounted  my  horse  and  galloped  to  the  station. 
I  roused  the  telegraph  operator  two  hours  be- 
fore his  time.  He  was  a  sleepy  fellow,  but  he 
was  accustomed  to  taking  imperative  messages 
out  of  hours.  I  gave  him  this  one  to  the  war 
department :  — 

Beavers  to  be  shot  to-morrow  morning.  No  proof 
whatever  he  was  ever  soldier.  If  not  soldier,  could  not 
have  deserted.  Too  old  for  conscript  law,  and  no  proof 
of  enlistment  except  Governor  Letcher's  telegram.  Tele- 
gram not  under  oath,  not  legal  testimony.  Witness  not 
subjected  to  cross-examination.  As  counsel,  I  demand 
stay  in  this  man's  case. 

I  rode  back  to  the  guardhouse,  and  found 
that  a  new  member  had  been  added  to  the 
battery.  The  company  was  known  as  Lamkin's 
Battery. 

We  named  the  new  member  "Little  Lamkin's 
Battery,"  to  distinguish  it,  I  suppose,  from  the 
big  one. 

Beavers  sat  all  that  morning  with  his  wife's 
hand  in  his,  and  Little  Lamkin's  Battery  in 
his  arms. 


"Little  Lamkin  s  Battery"         165 

He  said  it  looked  like  its  mother.  He'd 
"gamble  on  that." 

Not  until  within  an  hour  of  the  time  appointed 
for  Beavers's  execution  did  there  come  a  reply 
from  the  war  department.  But  when  it  came 
it  was  thoroughly  satisfactory.     It  read  thus  :  — 

Legal  points  conclusive.  Release  Beavers  and  restore 
him  to  duty.     Duplicate  sent  to  General  Walker. 

Soon  after  that  Beavers  deserted,  blankets 
and  all,  to  "the  other  enemy" — that  was  his 
form  of  speech,  not  mine. 

The  next  time  I  saw  him  was  under  peculiar 
circumstances. 

In  July,  1865,  I  went  on  board  the  steamer 
Morning  Star,  at  Portland,  four  miles  below 
Louisville,  Kentucky. 

I  was  two  or  three  hours  in  advance  of  the 
sailing  of  the  boat.  Only  a  few  people  were 
scattered  about  the  front  of  the  cabin.  I  went 
to  the  clerk,  paid  for  my  room  and  passage, 
and  pocketed  thirty  dollars  in  change.  A  mo- 
ment later  the  porter  came  in  with  my  trunk. 
I  put  my  hand  in  my  vest  pocket  to  get  the 
dollar  due  him,  but  found  my  thirty  dollars 
gone. 

I  had  all  the  feelings  which  a  man  always  has 
when  he  finds  that  his  pocket  has  been  picked 
—  which  include  the  feeling  of  helplessness. 

There  was  on  board  a  brigade  of  troops 
going   South.     They   were   late   enlisters,  who 


1 66        "Little  Lamkins  Battery'1'' 

had  seen  none  of  the  fighting.  The  men  were 
on  the  deck  below,  of  course.  The  officers, 
though  their  transportation  orders  called  only 
for  deck  passage,  were  by  courtesy  permitted 
in  the  cabin.  There  were  a  dozen  or  twenty  of 
them,  mainly  rough  lumbermen,  or  something 
of  that  kind.  They  evidently  wanted  to  see 
a  fight.  So  they  concluded  to  pick  that  fight 
with  me. 

One  of  them  came  up  to  me  where  I  was 
reading  a  novel,  and  began  the  trouble  by  say- 
ing:  "You're  a  rebel." 

"No,"  I  replied.  "I  was  a  rebel  while  the 
rebellion  lasted,  but  I  have  taken  the  oath  of 
allegiance,  and  am  at  present  a  loyal  citizen  of 
the  United  States." 

"Well,  you  were  a  rebel,"  he  said,  with  more 
offence  in  his  tone  than  in  his  words ;  "  and  I 
want  to  know  what  you  are  doing  here  in  the 
North." 

"  I'm  not  in  the  North,"  I  replied  ;  "  but  in  the 
middle  of  a  river  that  separates  the  North  from 
the  South." 

By  this  time  half  a  dozen  others  of  the  crowd 
had  gathered  in  front  of  me  with  angry  faces. 
It  was  manifestly  their  purpose  to  make  trouble, 
and  I  saw  no  use  in  trying  to  ward  it  off.  They 
were  planning  a  fight ;  and  whether  it  was  to  be 
a  safe  one  or  not,  it  seemed  to  me  a  good  time 
to  begin  it. 


"Little  Lamkiris  Battery"        167 

I  sprang  to  my  feet  and  faced  them.  I 
was  utterly  unarmed,  while  they  carried  their 
weapons.  I  grasped  a  chair  as  the  only  means 
of  defence  at  hand,  and  with  remarks  which 
are  better  not  repeated,  perhaps,  told  them  to 
come  on. 

Just  at  that  moment  a  stateroom  door  opened 
behind  me,  and  two  warm  hands  thrust  two 
pistols  into  my  grasp.  The  next  moment  a 
stalwart  figure,  armed  in  the  same  way,  stood 
beside  me,  and,  presenting  two  pistols,  called 
out :  "  Hands  up,  gentlemen  !  The  first  man 
that  moves  dies.  You're  twenty  to  two  of  us, 
but  —  " 

Some  language  followed. 

The  men  threw  up  their  hands. 

Without  taking  his  eyes  off  his  adversaries 
or  lowering  his  weapons,  my  comrade  called 
out :  "  Mr.  Clerk,  send  for  the  captain." 

When  the  captain  came,  my  comrade  re- 
ported that  these  men  had  made  an  unwar- 
ranted assault  upon  an  inoffensive  passenger, 
and  said :  "  They  have  no  business  in  the  cabin, 
anyway.  As  a  first-class  passenger,  I  call  on 
you  to  send  'em  below,  where  they  belong." 

The  captain  was  willing  enough.  He  had 
been  three  times  arrested  during  the  war  for 
aiding  "rebel  sympathizers."  A  minute  later 
these  officers  had  become  deck  passengers. 

Then  I   turned  to  my  deliverer,  and  to  my 


1 68        "Little  Lam-kins  Battery'''1 

astonishment  he  was  Beavers.  He  had  grown 
stout,  and  was  resplendent  in  a  suit  of  clothes 
with  checks  so  broad  that  it  might  easily  have 
taken  two  persons  to  show  the  pattern ;  other- 
wise he  was  the  same  old  nonchalant,  reckless 
Beavers,  ready  to  gamble  upon  any  chance  and 
to  pay  his  losses  though  the  payment  might  be 
with  his  life. 

I  made  my  identity  known  to  him  of  course. 
He  replied  immediately :  "  Why,  of  course,  I 
reckonized  you  long  before  this  thing  occurred, 
and  I  have  been  trying  to  get  an  excuse  for 
speaking  to  you.  Because  you  see  when  you 
came  aboard  in  mufti  I  didn't  know  who  you 
was,  and  so  I  lifted  thirty  dollars  out  of  your 
clothes.  I  wouldn't  have  done  it  if  I'd  a'  known 
it  was  you,  and  now  I  want  to  hand  it  back.  I 
could  just  as  easily  have  picked  that  other  fel- 
low's pocket  —  the  one  that  picked  the  quarrel 
with  you.  I  never  go  back  on  my  friends, 
never !  And  I've  never  forgot  how  you  got  me 
out  of  that  scrape." 

He  handed  me  back  the  thirty  dollars  and  I 
thanked  him.  He  said :  "  Don't  mention  it." 
He  added,  though  I  never  knew  what  he  meant 
by  it :  "  I'll  square  the  whole  thing  with  that 
other  feller.  He's  got  more'n  thirty  dollars  in 
his  wad." 

I  naturally  felt  a  little  warm  towards  Beavers. 
I  owed  him  my  life.     Therefore  when  he  sug- 


"Little  Lamkhis  Battery"        169 

gested  some  alcoholic  celebration  of  the  incident 
I  compromised  on  a  cigar.  However  little  you 
may  esteem  a  man,  it  is  difficult  to  snub  him  a 
few  minutes  after  he  has  saved  your  life. 

Beavers  went  to  the  baggage-master  and  said 
something  to  him  which  I  didn't  hear.  The 
baggage-master  shook  his  head  in  dissent. 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,"  said  Beavers;  "it's  five 
dollars  to  you,  old  man." 

"  Oh,  well,  that's  different,"  said  the  baggage- 
master,  and  two  minutes  later  Beavers  was 
searching  one  of  his  trunks.  Presently  he  came 
up  with  a  wad  of  papers  in  his  hand  and  we  re- 
turned to  the  cabin.  There  he  spread  out  some 
architectural  designs  for  a  gorgeous  monument, 
and  said  :  "  Look  at  that.  That's  the  design  of 
the  monument  I've  just  put  up  over  that  wife  of 
mine.  She  was  a  mighty  good  sort,  and  I've 
spent  good  money  to  give  her  a  proper  send-off. 
I've  paid  five  thousand  dollars  to  the  architect 
for  the  design,  and  fifteen  thousand  dollars  to 
have  it  built.  You  see  business  is  good  with 
me  just  now.  I've  got  a  faro  bank  at  Louisville 
and  another  at  Evansville  and  two  at  Cairo,  and 
another  at  St.  Louis,  and  three  at  Memphis  and 
one  at  Vicksburg,  and  two  at  New  Orleans.  As 
for  me  I  run  the  river  and  make  what  there  is  in 
it." 

Suddenly  a  thought  occurred  to  him. 

"  By   the    way,"    he    said,    "  you    remember 


1 70        '■'Little  Lamkins  Battery  " 

about  Little  Lamkin's  Battery  ?  Well,  he's  on 
board."  Beckoning  to  a  negro  nurse,  he  said: 
"  Bring  that  little  rascal  here." 

A  few  minutes  later  the  nurse  returned,  hav- 
ing a  peculiarly  bright,  three-year-old  boy  in 
charge,  whom  I  greeted  as  an  old  friend.  After 
talking  with  the  little  chap  for  a  few  moments 
I  turned  to  Beavers  and  said :  "  What  are  you 
going  to  make  out  of  him,  Beavers  ?  " 

"  Something  better  than  his  father  is,"  he  re- 
plied, "  for  his  mother's  sake  ;  and  that  reminds 
me  you're  just  out  of  the  war  and  you've  got 
your  way  to  make.  It  won't  do  for  you  to  know 
me.  If  you  ever  meet  me  goin'  up  and  down 
the  river,  I'll  cut  you  dead  and  don't  you  say 
nothing." 


CURRY 

CURRY  was  our  mess  cook. 
He  was  a  great  rascal,  but  one  of  the  best 
cooks  in  the  world.  And  besides  he  was  dis- 
criminative in  his  rascality.  He  never  did  any 
dishonest  thing  towards  us  ;  but  he  was  capable 
of  any  conceivable  crime,  if  he  could  commit  it 
in  our  behalf. 

He  was  a  pure-blooded  negro  of  the  brown  or 
semi-copper-colored  variety.  He  was  without  a 
trace  of  beard,  as  that  variety  of  negro  usually 
is.     His  voice  was  a  falsetto. 

His  devotion  was  dog-like.  If  the  state  of 
South  Carolina  held  anything  that  his  mess 
needed,  and  there  was  any  conceivable  way  in 
which  it  could  be  got,  he  got  it.  Frankly  with- 
out morals,  —  unless  devotion  to  his  mess  was 
a  moral  sentiment,  —  and  illimitable  in  resource 
as  he  was,  he  generally  so  managed  matters 
that  we  should  live  well. 

We  would  buy  a  pig  or  a  lamb,  and  have  a 

fore  quarter  for  dinner.      The  next  day  Curry 

would  give  us  a  hind  quarter.     The  next  day 

another  fore  quarter ;  and  so  on  until  that  mem- 

171 


172  Ctirry 

ber  of  the  mess  who  had  a  statistical  mind 
would  begin  to  reflect  that  there  are  really  only- 
four  quarters  to  an  animal,  while  we  had  had 
from  fifteen  to  twenty  quarters  from  this  one. 
Then  Curry  would  be  summoned,  and  indig- 
nantly asked :  "  Where  have  you  been  getting 
all  this  meat  we  have  been  eating  ? " 

The  question  never  disturbed  Curry  in  the 
least.  He  was  always  ready  with  the  answer : 
"  I  buyed  it  from  one  man,  sir." 

When  asked  who  the  man  was,  he  never 
knew.  And  when  questioned  as  to  payment,  he 
always  assured  us  that  the  "  one  man,  sir,"  was 
coming  that  afternoon  for  his  money. 

The  "  one  man,  sir,"  always  came  that  after- 
noon. His  charge  was  always  the  same  :  $2.50 
in  Confederate  currency,  or  something  less  than 
twenty-five  cents  in  real  money. 

The  pretence  was  a  bit  flimsy,  but  it  an- 
swered Curry's  purpose.  His  mess  was  well 
fed,  and  he  was  not  caught  in  his  raids  upon  the 
pig-pens  and  sheep-folds  thereabouts. 

Curry  was  a  slave,  and  we  hired  him  from  the 
estate  to  which  he  belonged  as  a  chattel.  One 
day  we  were  ordered  to  move  from  South 
Carolina  to  Virginia.  Curry  came  to  us  and 
asked  to  be  taken  with  us.  When  we  explained 
to  him  that  we  could  not  legally  take  him  out  of 
the  state,  he  deliberately  proposed  to  run  away 
in  order  to  go  with  us.     Having  no  alert  per- 


Curry  173 

ception  of  the  difference  between  crime  and 
good  conduct,  he  could  not  see  why  we  should 
not  abet  him  in  this  proposed  violation  of  law. 
But  when  we  made  it  clear  to  him  that,  for 
reasons  inscrutable  to  his  mind,  we  could  not 
permit  him  to  go  with  us  out  of  the  state,  he 
fell  into  melancholy. 

That  night  we  had  some  roast  pig  for  dinner ; 
and  Curry  had  not  "buyed  it  from  one  man, 
sir." 

The  only  reply  he  would  make  to  our  ques- 
tionings was :  "  I  done  got  it  fur  de  mess,  sir. 
De  mess  has  been  good  to  me." 

Early  next  morning  —  the  day  on  which  we 
were  to  leave  —  the  enemy  landed  below,  and  we 
were  ordered  forward  to  meet  them.  As  we  un- 
limbered  in  battery  and  opened  fire,  Curry  rode 
up  on  an  antique  mule,  stolen  for  the  occasion 
from  the  battery  blacksmith.  Leaping  from  his 
steed  he  went  to  the  gun  that  was  most  short- 
handed,  took  a  vacant  place,  and  began  fighting 
like  an  artilleryman.  When  the  head  of  the 
mess  rode  up  to  him  and  said  :  "  What  are  you 
doing  here,  Curry  ?  " 

His  reply  was  :   "  Ise  takin'  a  hand." 

The  fight  was  hot  for  ten  minutes.     At  the 

end  of   it  poor  Curry  lay  stretched  upon  the 

grass  —  a  bullet  through  his  chest.     One  of  us 

went  to  him  and   said  something  —  no  matter 


1 74  Curry 

what.  He  looked  up  and  said  :  "  I  can't  go  wi' 
de  mess  to  Virginy.  You'll  have  to  take  some 
no  'count  nigger.  But  Ise  fought  wi'  de  mess 
anyhow,  and  you'll  find  de  res'  o'  dat  pig  hangin' 
up  de  chimbly." 


GUN-BOATS 

A  GUN-BOAT  went  aground  one  night  in 
an  inlet  off  Chisholm's  Island,  near  Port 
Royal,  South  Carolina. 

As  soon  as  the  news  came  to  us,  we  set  out 
to  attack  her. 

We  marched  all  night,  and  in  the  early  gray 
of  the  dawn  we  reached  the  palmetto-studded 
island.  The  gun-boat  had,  in  the  meantime,  got 
off  the  bar  on  the  high  tide,  and  was  riding 
quietly  at  anchor,  four  hundred  yards  from  the 
nearest  available  point  on  the  shore. 

I  had  command  of  two  field  pieces.  Captain 
Elliot,  the  chief  of  artillery,  ordered  me  to  in- 
spect the  vessel  and  "  act  according  to  circum- 
stances." He  said  :  "  If  you  find  her  too  strong 
to  be  attacked  with  field  guns,  retire  quietly 
across  the  island.  If  you  find  her  not  too  strong, 
attack  her,  and  I  will  send  you  any  reinforce- 
ments necessary." 

I  took  Joe  with  me. 

We  crawled  up  to  the  brink  of  the  stream,  and 
took  a  good  look  in  the  gray  morning  light. 

But  that  look  didn't  tell  either  of  us  anything. 
Neither  of  us  knew  enough  about  naval  archi- 
i/5 


1 76  Gun-Boats 

tecture  and  armament  to  have  the  slightest  idea 
whether  the  boat  out  there  in  the  stream  was 
formidable  or  otherwise. 

"Well,  what  do  you  think,  Joe?"  I  asked. 
"  I  don't  think,"  he  answered ;  "  I  don't  know 
anything  about  it ;  but  my  notion  is  that  we'd 
better  give  her  a  shot  or  two,  anyhow." 

"Well,  the  way  I  look  at  it,"  said  I,  "is  this : 
Elliot  and  those  other  fellows  know,  and  we 
don't.  They'll  see  her  from  some  point  of  view. 
If  they  think  her  not  formidable,  and  we  don't 
attack,  they'll  blame  us.  If  we  attack,  and  she 
proves  too  formidable  —  well,  we've  got  good 
horses  and  we  can  run.  Order  up  the  guns, 
Joe." 

A  minute  later  we  opened  fire  with  two  twelve 
pounders.  By  one  of  those  freaks  of  extraordi- 
narily good  luck,  which  so  often  save  men  from 
disaster  in  war,  our  first  shot  severed  the  gun- 
boat's rudder  post.  Our  second  shell  passed 
through  her  boiler  and  exploded  in  her  furnace  ; 
not  only  setting  fire  to  her,  but  with  the  escap- 
ing steam  driving  the  men  from  the  gun  decks. 
This  left  her  with  only  one  available  gun  —  a 
swivel  on  the  poop. 

But  that  was  a  sixty-four  pound  howitzer,  one 
or  two  shots  from  which  would  have  swept  us 
off  that  island  like  so  much  dust.  Our  good 
luck  continuing,  however,  that  gun  burst  at  the 
first  fire. 


Gun-Boats  177 

The  ship  had  been  a  formidable,  heavily- 
armed  gun-boat,  carrying  several  eight-inch 
rifles ;  but  she  had  been  destroyed  by  two  field 
pop-guns.  She  slipped  her  cables,  and  drifted 
around  the  point  with  fire  bursting  from  every 
port  hole.  We  quickly  limbered  up  and  gal- 
loped to  another  point  of  attack. 

We  found  the  ship's  company  escaping  over 
the  sides  in  the  boats  and  rowing  for  the  marsh 
beyond.  We  opened  upon  them  at  short  range, 
sank  several  of  the  boats,  and  then  shelled  the 
marsh  for  scatterers. 

When  I  learned  later  from  Captain  Elliot  how 
formidable  that  ship  had  been,  I  was  filled  with 
a  great  contempt  for  gun-boats.  I  was  anxious 
to  get  a  chance  at  a  gun-boat  every  morning 
before  breakfast. 

I  got  it  presently.  With  that  same  section 
I  was  ordered  a  few  days  later  to  Combahee 
Ferry.  There  was  a  gun-boat  there.  My  orders 
were  the  same  as  before. 

This  gun-boat  was  a  little,  low,  insignificant 
looking  sloop.  She  seemed  to  me  almost  con- 
temptibly easy  game.  I  galloped  my  guns  to 
within  four  hundred  yards  of  her,  and  ordered 
them  in  battery. 

We  opened  fire.  The  gun-boat  for  a  time 
paid  no  attention  to  us.  But  by  the  time  that 
we  had  thrown  three  or  four  shells  at  her,  she 
lazily  undertook  to  attend  to  our  case,  in  much 


i  j8  Gun-Boats 

the  same  way  that  a  man  brushes  a  pestilent 
fly  from  his  nose. 

She  opened  on  us  with  one  of  those  great 
guns  which  pitch  shells  about  the  size  of  a 
normal  nail  keg  two  or  three  miles,  apparently 
without  effort. 

Her  first  shot  revealed  to  me  the  fact  that  I 
had  entirely  misunderstood  gun-boats. 

It  was  obvious  that  a  single  one  of  those 
shells,  should  it  burst  anywhere  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  my  guns,  would  put  a  final  end  to  that 
section  of  artillery  and  to  all  that  went  to  con- 
stitute it. 

During  the  next  five  minutes  we  bumped 
those  guns  at  a  gallop  over  the  old  cotton  rows, 
until  we  reached  the  cover  of  the  woodland. 

Whether  that  little  sloop  carried  one  gun  or 
twenty,  I  never  knew.  But  the  rapidity  of  her 
fire,  as  we  crossed  that  old  cotton  field,  con- 
vinced me,  for  the  time  being,  that  she  carried 
at  least  a  hundred. 


TWO    MINUTES 

HE  spent  the   evening  singing  "  Lorena." 
He  had  had  a  sort  of  day-off  that  day, 
and  had  visited  all  of  his  friends. 

The  author  of  that  song  had  made  it  read :  — 

"  A  hundred  weeks  have  passed,  Lorena," 

but  our  guest  improved  upon  that,  and  made 
the  lover  rather  aged  by  singing  it :  — 

"  A  hundred  year s  have  passed,  Lorena, 
Since  last  I  held  thy  hand  in  mine." 

This  was  the  only  positive  evidence  we  had 
that  he  had  been  calling. 

He  stayed  with  us  that  night,  and  was  not  feel- 
ing well  enough  the  next  day  even  to  sing 
"  Lorena."  The  next  day  after  that  he  found 
some  serious  work  to  do. 

The  way  of  it  was  this :  He  was  a  third  lieu- 
tenant in  the  engineers.  It  was  after  the  great 
mine  explosion  at  Petersburg,  and  the  engineers 
were  busily  engaged  at  that  time  using  all  their 
devices  for  the  discovery  of  other  mines.  They 
had  found  one  in  process  of  construction  in 
front  of  General  Grade's  lines.  They  had  pro- 
ceeded at  once  to  run  a  deeper  tunnel  under 
179 


180  Two  Minutes 

this  one.  They  had  loaded  the  end  of  it,  just 
underneath  the  enemy's  works,  with  an  incredi- 
ble amount  of  gunpowder,  and  on  that  morning 
it  was  to  be  fired. 

A  slow-match  had  been  brought  from  the 
powder  to  the  mouth  of  the  mine.  It  was 
lighted,  and  a  period  of  waiting  ensued.  The 
match  had  evidently  gone  out.  Where,  nobody 
knew  or  could  guess.  The  general  in  command 
of  that  part  of  the  line  turned  to  the  captain  of 
engineers  and  said :  "  The  mine  must  be  blown 
up  at  once ;  will  you  go  in  and  light  the  match 
again? " 

The  captain  hesitated,  saying :  "  I  don't 
know ;    it   may   go   off   at   any   moment." 

Thereupon  he  who  had  sung  "  Lorena" 
stepped  forward,  touched  his  cap  to  the  general, 
and  said :  "  With  your  permission,  /  will  go  in 
and  fire  it." 

"  Thank  you,"  said  the  general ;   "  go." 

The  man  picked  up  the  torch  and  started 
into  the  mine.  It  seems  that  the  slow-match 
had  gone  out  within  a  very  short  distance  of 
the  powder  magazine.  But  disregarding  that 
he  touched  the  torch  to  it,  set  it  off  again,  and 
ran  with  all  his  might  for  the  mouth  of  the 
opening. 

It  was  two  minutes'  work.  The  mine  went 
off  just  before  he  reached  the  outlet,  and  the 
air  pressure  literally  blew  him  out  of  it.     He 


Two  Minutes  181 

fell  sprawling  on  his  face.  He  was  consider- 
ably bruised  and  scratched  in  his  contact  with 
the  gravelly  ground,  but  he  was  not  in  any 
serious  way  injured.  Picking  himself  up, 
grimed  as  he  was,  he  took  off  his  cap,  and  dust- 
ing himself  like  a  schoolboy  who  has  fallen  in 
the  street,  he  approached  the  commanding 
officer  and  said :  "  General,  I  have  the  honor 
to  report  that  I  have  fired  the  mine  and  that  it 
has  gone  off." 

The  general  touched  his  cap  and  replied :  "  I 
had  observed  that  fact,  and  I  thank  you  very 
much.  I  beg  to  say  that  I  will  make  an  official 
report  of  the  circumstance." 

Two  days  later  we  all  touched  our  caps  to  a 
freshly  made  brigadier-general  of  the  engineers. 
The  captain  who  had  hesitated  remained  a 
captain. 


SI    TUCKER— COWARD    AND 
HERO 

I  WAS  in  command  of  Fort  Lamkin,  a  mortar 
fort,  in  rear  of  General  Bushrod  Johnson's 
lines  at  Petersburg  in  1864. 

The  fort  was  named  for  our  immediate  com- 
mander, from  whose  command  we  had  been 
detached  for  this  service. 

One  day  Lamkin  himself  came  to  me  when  I 
was  at  his  headquarters.  He  was  obviously  in 
trouble. 

"This  boy,  Si  Tucker,"  he  said,  "is  the  son 
of  one  of  the  best  friends  I  ever  had  in  the 
world.  The  boy  is  a  coward.  He  literally  lives 
in  a  rat  hole.  I  have  repeatedly  pulled  him 
out  by  the  legs,  only  to  have  him  crawl  back 
again  the  moment  I  let  go  of  his  ankles.  I 
don't  know  what  to  do.  It's  my  duty,  of  course, 
to  prefer  charges  of  cowardice  against  him ; 
and  if  I  do,  he  will  certainly  be  shot  —  and 
his  father  is  my  best  friend." 

He  paused  meditatively,  and  then  said  with 
eagerness  in  his  voice :  "  Why  can't  you  take 
him  ? " 

I  agreed  at  once.  I  told  him  I  would  take 
182 


St  Tucker —  Coward  and  Hero     1 83 

the  boy  with  me  to  my  pits,  and  make  "  either  a 
soldier  or  a  stiff"  out  of  him  within  the  next 
twenty-four  hours.  I  was  under  no  obligations 
to  his  father ;  I  had  never  even  met  any  of  his 
relatives,  and  I  had  seen  too  many  years  of 
service  to  have  much  patience  with  cowardice. 

The  boy  was  sent  for  and  ordered  to  go  with 
me.  We  walked  down  towards  Blandford  church. 
At  the  proper  point  we  turned  out  of  the  Jeru- 
salem plank  road  across  the  fields  towards  Fort 
Lamkin.  Half-way  there  and  on  the  top  of  a 
little  hill,  which  was  especially  exposed  to  the 
gaze  of  the  sharp-shooters,  I  made  Si  Tucker 
sit  down  by  my  side.  There  we  came  to  an 
understanding. 

I  told  him  that  he  had  been  assigned  to  me 
to  be  shot  out  of  hand,  or  to  be  court-martialled 
for  cowardice,  which  at  that  particular  junct- 
ure of  the  war  meant  very  much  the  same 
thing.  I  explained  to  him  that  he  was  about 
to  join  a  detachment,  composed  exclusively  of 
men  specially  selected  for  their  courage  —  every 
one  of  them  a  volunteer  for  what  was  deemed  a 
peculiarly  dangerous  service. 

I  explained  further  that  I  should  require  him 
to  do  his  duty  as  they  did  theirs. 

"  You  have  managed  to  make  for  yourself," 
I  said,  "  the  reputation  of  a  coward.  You  have 
now  one  last  chance  to  redeem  yourself.  You 
must  do  that,  or  you  must  die." 


184     Si  Tucker —  Coward  and  Hero 

The  sharp-shooters  were,  in  the  meantime, 
picking  at  us  most  uncomfortably  as  we  sat 
there.  My  experience  as  an  old  soldier  strongly 
suggested  to  me  that  we  ought  to  move.  The 
position  was  of  that  kind  that  military  men 
call  untenable.  Nevertheless,  I  thought  it  best 
to  keep  Si  Tucker  there  a  minute  longer,  for 
purposes  of  observation,  if  nothing  else. 

"At  our  pits,"  I  said,  "we  have  one  uniform 
rule  of  procedure.  When  a  bombardment  be- 
gins, the  men  go  to  their  guns.  I  take  my 
stand  on  top  of  the  magazine  mound  to  watch 
the  enemy's  fire  and  direct  our  own.  If  I  see 
that  a  mortar  shell  is  about  to  fall  into  one  of 
the  gun  pits,  I  call  out  the  pit  number,  and  the 
men  run  into  the  bomb-proof  until  the  explosion 
is  over.  No  man  ever  goes  into  a  bomb-proof 
till  this  order  is  given.  You  must  do  as  the  rest 
do.  If  you  run  to  a  bomb-proof  before  I  have 
given  the  order,  it  will  be  my  imperative  duty 
to  shoot  you  then  and  there ;  and  I  shall  cer- 
tainly discharge  that  duty.  Do  you  fully  under- 
stand that,  Si  ? " 

He  thought  he  did,  and  as  the  sharp-shooters 
were  by  this  time  becoming  pestilently  personal 
in  their  attentions,  we  resumed  our  walk. 

Half  an  hour  after  our  arrival  at  Fort  Lam- 
kin,  a  bombardment  began. 

I  didn't  want  to  shoot  that  boy.  I  distinctly 
preferred  to  make  a  soldier  rather  than  a  "stiff  " 


Si  Tucker —  Coward  and  Hero      185 

out  of  him.  So,  instead  of  taking  my  customary- 
stand  on  the  mound  of  earth  over  the  magazine, 
I  ordered  Joe  to  that  post,  and  placed  myself 
in  the  gun  pit  to  which  Si  Tucker  had  been 
assigned,  taking  care  to  stand  between  him  and 
the  mouth  of  the  bomb-proof.  I  spoke  to  him 
as  I  passed. 

"  Remember  what  I  told  you.  If  you  forget, 
it  is  instant  death." 

He  remembered.  For  nearly  two  hours  he 
stood  there  quaking  and  quivering,  but  not  dar- 
ing to  seek  safety  by  retreat  to  a  bomb-proof. 

By  the  time  that  the  outburst  was  over,  Si 
Tucker  had  learned  his  first  lesson  in  war.  He 
had  learned  to  realize  that  a  man  may  endure 
a  lot  of  very  savage  fire,  and  yet  come  out  of  it 
alive. 

A  few  hours  later,  when  the  guns  were  at 
work  again,  Si  was  steady  enough  in  his  nerves 
to  carry  shells  to  the  guns.  The  next  day  he 
was  even  able  during  a  bombardment  to  cut 
fuses  —  a  delicate  operation  requiring  a  steady 
hand. 

Within  two  or  three  days  he  had  become  as 
good  a  soldier  as  we  had  in  all  that  band  of  men 
specially  picked  for  their  unflinching  courage. 

When  the  great  mine  explosion  occurred  a 
few  weeks  later,  I  had  occasion  to  rebuke  Si 
Tucker  for  a  fault  quite  unrelated  to  cowardice. 
We  had  been  ordered  to  go  with  our  mortars  as 


1 86     Si  Tucker — Coward  and  Hero 

near  as  possible  to  the  crater,  and  to  drop  a  con- 
tinual rain  of  shells  among  the  thousands  of 
helpless  fellows  in  that  awful  pit. 

It  was  cruel,  ghastly  work.  But  it  was  war. 
And  a  poet  has  justly  characterized  war  as  a 
"brain-spattering,  windpipe-slitting  art."  Or  as 
General  Sherman  once  said,  —  and  he  knew,  — 
"War  is  all  hell." 

We  were  within  sixty  yards  of  the  crater. 
Each  one  of  our  mortars  was  belching  from  three 
to  five  shells  a  minute  into  that  hole ;  but  Si 
Tucker's  enthusiasm  was  not  satisfied.  Having 
no  personal  duty  to  do  at  the  moment,  he  began 
plugging  shells  with  long  fuses,  lighting  them, 
running  with  them  to  the  margin  of  the  pit,  and 
tossing  them  in  as  hand  grenades.  He  was 
greeted  by  a  tremendous  volley  of  musketry  at 
each  repetition  of  this  performance,  but  he  did 
it  three  times  before  we  could  stop  him. 

That  evening,  near  the  gloaming,  he  did  an- 
other thing.  The  lines  had  by  that  time  been 
restored.  The  men  in  the  crater  —  those  of 
them  who  had  not  been  killed  —  had  been  driven 
back  to  the  Federal  side.  We  became  aware  of 
the  fact  that  a  poor  fellow  of  our  own  was  lying 
grievously  wounded  near  the  Federal  side  of  the 
fifty  yards  that  separated  our  works  from  the 
enemy's.  He  had  been  lying  there  through  all 
that  long,  fierce  summer  day.  The  explosion  at 
daylight  had  cast  him  there. 


Si  Tucker —  Coward  and  Hero      187 

His  groans  and  his  cries  for  help  and  for 
water  were  piteous  in  the  extreme.  We  listened 
to  them  heartbroken  but  helpless  —  all  but  Si 
Tucker. 

Si  began  stripping  off  his  clothes  ;  we  thought 
he  had  gone  mad.  But  when  we  asked  him  why 
he  was  stripping  himself,  he  replied :  "  Never 
you  mind." 

With  that,  stripped  to  the  skin,  he  leaped 
over  the  works,  ducked  his  head  low,  and  ran 
through  that  hailstorm  of  bullets  to  where  the 
wounded  man  lay.  Grasping  him  quickly,  he 
slung  him  upon  his  back  like  a  bag  of  meal,  and 
ran  back  with  all  his  might. 

As  he  crossed  the  works  he  fell  headlong. 

The  surgeon  found  three  bullets  in  his  body. 

Nobody  in  the  battery  ever  remembered  after 
that,  that  Si  Tucker  had  once  been  a  coward. 

After  all,  it  is  perhaps  mainly  a  question  of 
nerves. 


WAR   AS   A    THERAPEUTIC 
AGENT 

DOCTOR  TOWNS  was  a  wealthy  gentle- 
man in  Mississippi. 

For   a   good   many  years  he  had   employed 

Miss  R of  Massachusetts  as  governess  for 

his  daughters.  She  had  lived  all  these  years  as 
an  honored  member  of  his  family,  with  every 
social  opportunity  that  Mississippi  society  af- 
forded. 

At  last  the  two  girls  outgrew  the  need  of  a 
governess.  One  of  them  was  sent  abroad  to 
study  art  at  Nuremberg.    The  other  got  married. 

Upon  the   occurrence    of   this  event   Doctor 

Towns  went  to  the   young   lady,  Miss  R , 

and  suggested  that  as  her  services  had  been 
of  incalculable  value  to  his  daughters  he  was 
anxious  to  secure  for  her,  now  that  they  no 
longer  needed  her,  an  equally  good  situation  in 
some  other  gentleman's  family. 

He  explained  that  he  had  already  written  to 
a  friend  in  Alabama  strongly  recommending 
her,  and  that  his  friend  desired  her  to  come  on 
at  once. 

Apparently   this    pleased    Miss    R very 

greatly.  She  packed  her  trunks  that  night 
j88 


War  as  a  Therapeutic  Agent       189 

with  the  aid  of  the  colored  maid  who  had  been 
assigned  to  her  service.  She  was  to  leave  in 
the  morning. 

In  the  morning  word  came  down  from  her 
chamber  that  she  was  unable  to  get  up.  Every 
attention  and  every  sympathy  was  shown  her, 
and  after  a  day  or  two  Doctor  Towns,  finding 
himself  baffled  to  discover  disease  of  any  kind, 
sent  for  another  physician.  The  other  physi- 
cian was  equally  unsuccessful.  The  simple 
fact  was  that  the  young  woman  could  not  get 
out  of  her  bed.  Why  she  could  not  get  out  of 
her  bed  was  a  problem  that  the  medical  men 
were  wholly  unable  to  solve.  The  young 
woman's  appetite  was  excellent,  and  all  her 
functions  seemed  to  be  in  an  entirely  normal 
condition. 

Nevertheless,  she  could  not  get  up. 

Week  after  week  she  lay  there,  attentively 
waited  upon  by  the  servants,  assiduously  visited 
by  the  family,  sympathetically  condoled  with  by 
friends,  but  still  utterly  unable  to  arise  from  her 
bed.  Her  salary  was  continued  all  the  while, 
of  course. 

The  servants  at  last  became  suspicious. 

To  their  minds  it  seemed  incredible  that  she 
should  live  so  long  and  so  comfortably  without 
exercise.  They  suspected  that  she  got  up  in 
the  night  and  walked  the  floor.  To  test  this 
they  gently  sprinkled  her  floor  with  pulverized 


1 90      War  as  a  Therapeutic  Agent 

starch  while  she  slept,  and  then  turned  out  the 
lights.  But  weeks  of  experimentation  of  this 
character  utterly  failed  to  reveal  that  the  young 
woman  ever  got  out  of  her  bed. 

She  read  the  newspapers  with  great  diligence 
every  day,  and  she  read  all  the  new  books  that 
came  out,  for  they  all  came  to  Doctor  Towns's 
household. 

She  even  wrote  now  and  then,  lying  there  in 
bed,  for  newspapers  and  magazines  with  which 
she  had  established  connections.  She  was  a 
brilliant  woman,  and  her  matter  was  acceptable 
in  the  market. 

She  lay  thus,  for  eighteen  months.  Then 
came  secession. 

The  newspapers  were  filled  with  it.  When 
at  last  war  became  an  obvious  fact,  and  escape 
from  the  South  to  any  Northern  person  disin- 
clined  to    Southern   policies  was   manifestly  a 

matter  of  but  a  few  days,  Miss  R suddenly, 

I  may  almost  say  miraculously,  recovered.  She 
got  up  one  morning  and  packed  her  trunks 
before  six  o'clock.  At  seven,  when  the  family 
breakfast  was  served,  she  appeared  in  the  din- 
ing-room, and  calmly  asked :  "  Will  you  kindly 
send  me  to  the  railroad  station,  Doctor  Towns  ? 
I'm  going  North  to-day." 

No  explanation  was  ever  asked  or  ever  given. 

Miss  R went  North.     That  was  all. 


"NOTES   ON   COLD    HARBOR"1 

I  ALWAYS  think  of  our  arrival  at  Cold  Har- 
bor as  marking  a  new  phase  of  the  war. 

By  the  time  that  we  had  reached  that  posi- 
tion, we  had  pretty  well  got  over  our  astonish- 
ment and  disappointment  at  the  conduct  of 
General  Grant. 

I  put  the  matter  in  that  way  because,  as  I  re- 
member, astonishment  and  disappointment  were 
the  prevailing  emotions  in  the  ranks  of  the  army 
of  Northern  Virginia  when  we  discovered,  after 
the  contest  in  the  Wilderness,  that  General  Grant 
was  not  going  to  retire  behind  the  river  and  per- 
mit General  Lee  to  carry  on  a  campaign  against 
Washington  in  the  usual  way,  but  was  moving 
to  the  Spottsylvania  position  instead. 

We  had  been  accustomed  to  a  program  which 
began  with  a  Federal  advance,  culminated  in 
one  great  battle,  and  ended  in  the  retirement 
of  the  Union  army,  the  substitution  of  a  new 
Federal  commander  for  the  one  beaten,  and  the 

1  These  notes  were  originally  printed  in  the  great  war  book 
of  the  Century  Company,  entitled :  "  Battles  and  Leaders  of  the 
Civil  War."     They  are  here  reprinted  by  the  courteous  and  very 
generous  permission  of  the  Century  Company. 
191 


192         "Notes  on  Cold  Harbor'" 

institution  of  a  more  or  less  offensive  campaign 
on  our  part. 

This  was  the  usual  order  of  events,  and  this 
was  what  we  confidently  expected  when  Gen- 
eral Grant  crossed  into  the  Wilderness.  But 
here  was  a  new  Federal  general,  fresh  from  the 
West,  and  so  ill  informed  as  to  the  military  cus- 
toms in  our  part  of  the  country,  that  when  the 
battle  of  the  Wilderness  was  over,  instead  of 
retiring  to  the  north  bank  of  the  river,  and 
awaiting  the  development  of  Lee's  plans,  he 
had  the  temerity  to  move  by  his  left  flank  to  a 
new  position,  there  to  try  conclusions  with  us 
again. 

We  were  greatly  disappointed  with  General 
Grant,  and  full  of  curiosity  to  know  how  long  it 
was  going  to  take  him  to  perceive  the  impro- 
priety of  his  course. 

But  by  the  time  that  we  reached  Cold  Har- 
bor, we  had  begun  to  understand  what  our 
new  adversary  meant,  and  there,  for  the  first 
time  I  think,  the  men  in  the  ranks  of  the  army 
of  Northern  Virginia  realized  that  the  era  of 
experimental  campaigns  against  us  was  over; 
that  Grant  was  not  going  to  retreat;  that  he 
was  not  to  be  removed  from  command  because 
he  had  failed  to  break  Lee's  resistance ;  and 
that  the  policy  of  pounding  had  begun,  and 
would  continue  until  our  strength  should  be 
utterly  worn  away,  unless  by  some  decisive  blow 


" Notes  on  Cold  Harbor"  193 

to  the  army  in  our  front,  or  some  brilliant  move- 
ment in  diversion, —  such  as  Early's  invasion  of 
Maryland  a  little  later  was  intended  to  be, —  we 
should  succeed  in  changing  the  character  of  the 
contest. 

We  began  to  understand  that  Grant  had  taken 
hold  of  the  problem  of  destroying  the  Confeder- 
ate strength  in  the  only  way  that  the  strength 
of  such  an  army,  so  commanded,  could  be 
destroyed,  and  that  he  intended  to  continue  the 
plodding  work  till  the  task  should  be  accom- 
plished, wasting  very  little  time  or  strength  in 
efforts  to  make  a  brilliant  display  of  general- 
ship in  a  contest  of  strategic  wits  with  Lee.  We 
at  last  began  to  understand  what  Grant  had 
meant  by  his  expression  of  a  determination  to 
"  fight  it  out  on  this  line,  if  it  takes  all  sum- 
mer." 

Our  state  of  mind,  however,  was  curiously  illus- 
trative of  the  character  of  the  contest,  and  of 
the  people  who  participated  in  it  on  the  part  of 
the  South.  The  Southern  folk  were  always 
debaters,  loving  logic,  and  taking  off  their  hats 
to  a  syllogism. 

They  had  never  been  able  to  understand  how 
any  reasonable  mind  could  doubt  the  right  of 
secession,  or  fail  to  see  the  unlawfulness  and 
iniquity  of  coercion,  and  they  were  in  a  chronic 
state  of  astonished  incredulity,  as  the  war  began, 
that  the  North  could  indeed  be  about  to  wage  a 


194         "Notes  on  Cold  Harbor"' 

war  that  was  manifestly  forbidden  by  unimpeach- 
able logic. 

In  the  same  way,  at  Cold  Harbor,  we  were  all 
disposed  to  waste  a  good  deal  of  intellectual 
energy  in  demonstrating  to  each  other  the 
absurd  and  unreasonable  character  of  General 
Grant's  procedure.  We  could  show  that  he 
must  have  lost  already  in  that  campaign  more 
men  than  Lee's  entire  force,  and  ought,  logi- 
cally, to  acknowledge  his  defeat  and  retire  ;  that 
having  begun  the  contest  with  an  overwhelming 
advantage  in  point  of  numbers,  he  ought  to  be 
ashamed  to  ask  for  reinforcements ;  and  that 
while  continuing  the  process  of  suffering  great 
losses,  in  order  to  inflict  much  smaller  losses  on 
us,  he  could  ultimately  wear  us  out,  it  was  incon- 
ceivable that  any  general  should  consent  to  win 
in  that  unfair  way. 

In  like  manner  we  were  prepared  to  prove 
the  wicked  imbecility  of  his  plan  of  campaign  — 
a  plan  that  could  only  end  by  placing  him  in 
a  position  below  Richmond  and  Petersburg, 
which  he  might  just  as  well  reach  by  an 
advance  from  Fort  Monroe,  without  the  tre- 
mendous slaughter  of  the  Wilderness,  Spottsyl- 
vania,  etc. 

In  view  of  General  Grant's  stolid  indifference 
to  considerations  of  this  character,  however, 
there  was  nothing  for  us  to  do  but  fight  the 
matter  out. 


"Nofes  on  Cold  Harbor"  195 

We  had  no  fear  of  the  ultimate  result,  how- 
ever plainly  our  own  perception  of  facts  pointed 
to  the  inevitable  destruction  of  our  power  of 
resistance.  We  had  absolute  faith  in  Lee's 
ability  to  meet  and  repel  any  assault  that  might 
be  made,  and  to  devise  some  means  of  destroy- 
ing Grant.  There  was,  therefore,  no  fear  in  the 
Confederate  ranks  of  anything  that  General 
Grant  might  do ;  but  there  was  an  appalling 
and  well-founded  fear  of  starvation,  which  in- 
deed some  of  us  were  already  suffering.  From 
the  beginning  of  that  campaign  our  food-supply 
had  been  barely  sufficient  to  maintain  life,  and 
on  the  march  from  Spottsylvania  to  Cold  Harbor 
it  would  have  been  a  gross  exaggeration  to  de- 
scribe it  in  that  way. 

In  my  own  battery,  three  hard  biscuits  and 
one  very  meagre  slice  of  fat  pork  were  issued 
to  each  man  on  our  arrival,  and  that  was  the 
first  food  that  any  of  us  had  seen  since  our 
departure  from  Spottsylvania,  two  days  before. 
The  next  supply  did  not  come  till  two  days 
later,  and  it  consisted  of  a  single  cracker  per 
man,  with  no  meat  at  all. 

We  practised  a  very  rigid  economy  with  this 
food,  of  course.  We  ate  the  pork  raw,  partly 
because  there  was  no  convenient  means  of  cook- 
ing it,  but  more  because  cooking  would  have 
involved  some  waste.  We  hoarded  what  we 
had,  allowing  ourselves  only  a  nibble   at   any 


196  "Notes  on  Cold  Harbor" 

one  time,  and  that  only  when  the  pangs  of  hun- 
ger became  unbearable. 

But  what  is  the  use  of  writing  about  the 
pangs  of  hunger  ?  The  words  are  utterly  mean- 
ingless to  persons  who  have  never  known  actual 
starvation,  and  they  cannot  be  made  other  than 
meaningless.  Hunger  to  starving  men  is  wholly 
unrelated  to  the  desire  for  food  as  that  is  com- 
monly understood  and  felt.  It  is  a  great  agony 
of  the  whole  body  and  soul  as  well.  It  is  an  un- 
imaginable, all-pervading  pain,  inflicted  when 
the  strength  to  endure  pain  is  utterly  gone.  It 
is  the  great,  despairing  cry  of  a  wasting  body  — 
a  cry  of  flesh  and  blood,  marrow,  nerves,  bones, 
and  faculties  for  strength  with  which  to  exist 
and  to  endure  existence.  It  is  a  horror  which, 
once  suffered,  leaves  an  impression  that  is  never 
erased  from  the  memory,  and  to  this  day  the 
agony  of  that  campaign  comes  back  upon  me 
at  the  mere  thought  of  any  living  creature's 
lacking  the  food  it  desires,  even  though  its 
hunger  be  only  the  ordinary  craving,  and  the 
denial  be  necessary  for  the  creature's  health. 

When  we  reached  Cold  Harbor,  the  command 
to  which  I  belonged  had  been  marching  almost 
continuously  day  and  night  for  more  than  fifty 
hours  without  food  ;  and,  for  the  first  time,  we 
knew  what  actual  starvation  was.  It  was  dur- 
ing that  march  that  I  heard  a  man  wish  himself 
a  woman,  —  the  only  case  of  the  kind  I  ever 


"Notes  ou  Cold  Harbor"  197 

heard  of,  —  and  he  uttered  the  wish  half  in  grim 
jest,  and  made  haste  to  qualify  it  by  adding 
"or  a  baby." 

Yet  we  recovered  our  cheerfulness  at  once 
after  taking  the  first  nibble  of  the  crackers  is- 
sued to  us  there,  and  made  a  jest  of  the  scanti- 
ness of  the  supply.  One  tall,  lean  mountaineer, 
Jim  Thomas  by  name,  who  received  a  slight 
wound  every  time  he  was  under  fire,  and  was 
never  sufficiently  hurt  to  quit  duty,  was  stand- 
ing on  a  bank  of  earth  slowly  munching  a  bit 
of  his  last  cracker  and  watching  the  effect  of 
some  artillery  fire  which  was  in  progress  at  the 
time,  when  a  bullet  carried  away  his  cap  and 
cut  a  strip  of  hair  from  his  head,  leaving  the 
scalp  for  a  space  as  bald  as  if  it  had  been 
shaved  with  a  razor.  He  sat  down  at  once  to 
nurse  a  sharp  headache,  and  then  discovered 
that  the  cracker  he  had  held  in  his  hand  was 
gone,  leaving  a  mere  fragment  in  his  grasp. 
At  first  he  was  in  doubt  whether  he  might  not 
have  eaten  it  unconsciously ;  but  he  quickly 
discovered  that  it  had  been  knocked  out  of  his 
hand  and  crushed  to  bits  by  a  bullet,  where- 
upon as  he  sat  there  in  an  exposed  place,  where 
the  fire  was  unobstructed,  he  lamented  his  loss 
in  soliloquy. 

"  If  I  had  eaten  that  cracker  half  an  hour 
ago,  it  would  have  been  safe,"  he  said.  "  I 
should  have  had  none  left  for  next  time,  but  I 


198  "Notes  on  Cold  Harbor''' 

have  none  left  as  it  is.  That  shows  how  foolish 
it  is  to  save  anything.  Whew !  how  my  head 
aches.  I  wish  it  was  from  overeating,  but  even 
the  doctor  couldn't  lay  it  to  that  just  now.  The 
next  time  I  stand  up  to  watch  the  firing,  I'll  put 
my  cracker  —  if  I  have  any  —  in  a  safe  place 
down  by  the  breastworks,  where  it  won't  get 
wounded,  poor  thing !  By  the  way,  here's  a 
little  piece  left,  and  that'll  get  shot  while  I  sit 
here  talking."  And  with  that  he  jumped  down 
into  the  ditch,  carefully  placed  the  mouthful  of 
hardtack  at  the  foot  of  the  works,  and  resumed 
his  interested  observation  of  the  artillery  duel. 

Trifling  of  that  kind  was  constant  among  the 
men  throughout  that  terrible  campaign  from  the 
Wilderness  to  Petersburg,  and  while  it  yielded 
nothing  worth  recording  as  wit  or  humor,  it  has 
always  seemed  to  me  the  most  remarkable  and 
most  significant  fact  in  the  history  of  the  time. 
It  revealed  a  capacity  for  cheerful  endurance 
which  alone  made  the  campaign  possible  on  the 
Confederate  side. 

With  mercenary  troops  or  regulars  the  resist- 
ance that  Lee  was  able  to  offer  to  Grant's  tre- 
mendous pressure  would  have  been  impossible 
in  such  circumstances.  The  starvation  and  the 
excessive  marching  would  have  destroyed  the 
morale  of  troops  held  together  only  by  disci- 
pline. No  historical  criticism  of  our  Civil  War 
can  be  otherwise  than  misleading  if  it  omits  to 


"Notes  on  Cold  Harbor"  199 

give  a  prominent  place,  as  a  factor,  to  the  char- 
acter of  the  volunteers  on  both  sides,  who,  in 
acquiring  the  steadiness  and  order  of  regulars, 
never  lost  their  personal  interest  in  the  contest, 
or  their  personal  pride  of  manhood  as  a  sustain- 
ing force  under  trying  conditions.  If  either 
side  had  lacked  this  element  of  personal  hero- 
ism on  the  part  of  its  men,  it  would  have  been 
driven  from  the  field  long  before  1865.  It  seems 
to  me  the  most  important  duty  of  those  who  now 
furnish  the  materials  out  of  which  the  ultimate 
history  of  our  Civil  War  will  be  constructed  to 
emphasize  this  aspect  of  the  matter,  and  in  every 
possible  way  to  illustrate  the  part  which  the  high 
personal  character  of  the  volunteers  in  the  ranks 
played  in  determining  the  events  of  the  contest. 
For  that  reason  I  like  to  record  one  incident 
which  I  had  an  opportunity  to  observe  at  Cold 
Harbor. 

Immediately  opposite  the  position  occupied 
by  the  battery  to  which  I  belonged,  and  about 
six  or  eight  hundred  yards  distant  across  an 
open  field,  lay  a  Federal  battery,  whose  com- 
mander was  manifestly  a  man  deeply  in  earnest 
for  other  and  higher  reasons  than  those  that 
govern  the  professional  soldier :  a  man  who 
fought  well,  because  he  fought  in  what  he  felt 
to  be  his  own  cause  and  quarrel. 

His  guns  and  ours  were  engaged  almost  con- 
tinuously in  an  artillery  duel,  so  that  I  became 


200  "Notes  on  Cold  Harbor" 

especially  interested  in  him,  particularly  as  the 
extreme  precision  of  his  fire  indicated  thorough- 
ness and  conscientiousness  of  work  for  months 
before  the  campaign  began.  One  day — whether 
before  or  after  the  great  assault,  I  cannot  now 
remember  —  that  part  of  our  line  which  lay 
immediately  to  the  left  of  the  position  occupied 
by  the  battery  to  which  I  belonged  was  thrown 
forward  to  force  the  opposing  Federal  line  back. 
It  was  the  only  large  movement  in  the  way  of 
a  charge  over  perfectly  open  ground  that  I  ever 
had  a  chance  to  observe  with  an  unobstructed 
view,  and  merely  as  a  spectator. 

When  we,  with  a  few  well-aimed  shells,  had 
fired  a  barn  that  stood  between  the  lines,  and 
driven  a  multitude  of  sharp-shooters  out  of  it, 
the  troops  to  our  left  leaped  over  our  works 
and  with  a  cheer  moved  rapidly  across  the  field. 
The  resistance  made  to  their  advance  was  not 
very  determined,  —  probably  the  Federal  line  at 
that  point  had  been  weakened  by  concentration 
elsewhere,  —  and  after  a  brief  struggle  our  men 
crossed  the  slight  Federal  earthworks  and  pressed 
their  adversaries  back  into  the  woods  and  beyond 
my  view.  It  was  a  beautiful  operation  to  look 
at,  and  one,  the  like  of  which,  a  soldier  rarely 
has  an  opportunity  to  see  so  well ;  but  my  at- 
tention was  specially  drawn  to  the  situation  of 
the  artillery  commander,  to  whom  I  have  re- 
ferred as  posted  immediately  in  our  front.     His 


" Notes  on  Cold  Harbor"         201 

position  was  the  pivot,  the  point  where  the 
Federal  line  was  broken  to  a  new  angle,  when 
that  part  of  it  which  lay  upon  his  right  hand 
was  pressed  back  while  that  on  his  left  remained 
stationary. 

He  fought  like  a  Turk  or  a  tiger. 

He  directed  the  greater  part  of  his  fire  upon 
the  advancing  line  of  Confederates,  but  turned 
a  gun  every  few  minutes  upon  our  battery, 
apparently  by  way  of  letting  us  know  that  he 
was  not  unmindful  of  our  attentions,  even  when 
he  was  so  busily  engaged  elsewhere. 

The  bending  back  of  the  line  on  his  right 
presently  subjected  him  to  a  murderous  fire 
upon  the  flank  and  rear,  —  a  fire  against  which 
he  had  no  protection  whatever,  —  while  we  con- 
tinued a  furious  bombardment  from  the  front. 
His  position  was  plainly  an  untenable  one,  and 
so  far  as  I  could  discover  with  a  strong  glass,  he 
was  for  a  time  without  infantry  support.  But 
he  held  his  ground  and  continued  to  fight  in 
spite  of  all,  firing  at  one  time  as  from  two  faces 
of  an  acute  triangle. 

His  determination  was  superb,  and  the  cool- 
ness of  his  gunners  and  cannoneers  was  worthy 
of  the  unbounded  admiration  which  we,  their 
enemies,  felt  for  them.  Their  firing  increased 
as  their  difficulties  multiplied,  but  it  showed  no 
sign  of  becoming  wild  or  hurried.  Every  shot 
went  straight  to  the  object  against  which  it  was 


202  "Notes  on  Cold  Harbor'" 

directed;  every  fuse  was  accurately  timed,  and 
every  shell  burst  where  it  was  intended  to  burst. 
I  remember  that  in  the  very  heat  of  the  contest 
there  came  into  my  mind  Bulwer's  superb  de- 
scription of  Warwick's  last  struggle,  in  which 
he  says  that  around  the  king-maker's  person 
there  "  centred  a  little  WAR,"  and  I  applied 
the  phrase  to  the  heroic  fellow  who  was  so 
superbly  fighting  against  hopeless  odds  imme- 
diately in  front  of  me. 

Several  of  his  guns  were  dismounted  and  his 
dead  horses  were  strewn  in  the  rear.  The  loss 
among  his  men  was  appalling,  but  he  fought  on 
as  coolly  as  before,  and  with  our  glasses  we  could 
see  him  calmly  sitting  on  his  large  gray  horse 
directing  his  gunners  and  patiently  awaiting  the 
coming  of  the  infantry  support,  without  which 
he  could  not  withdraw  his  guns.  It  came  at  last, 
and  the  batteries  retired  to  the  new  line. 

When  the  battalion  was  gone  and  the  brief 
action  over,  the  wreck  that  was  left  behind  bore 
sufficient  witness  of  the  fearfulness  of  the  fire 
so  coolly  endured.  The  large  gray  horse  lay 
dead  upon  the  ground ;  but  we  preferred  to  be- 
lieve that  his  brave  rider  was  still  alive  to  receive 
the  promotion  which  he  had  so  well  won. 


A    PLANTATION    HEROINE 

IT  was  nearing  the  end. 
Every  resource  of  the  Southern  states  had 
been  taxed  to  the  point  of  exhaustion. 

The  people  had  given  up  everything  they 
had  for  "the  cause." 

Under  the  law  of  a  "tax  in  kind,"  they  had 
surrendered  all  they  could  spare  of  food  prod- 
ucts of  every  character.  Under  an  untamable 
impulse  of  patriotism  they  had  surrendered 
much  more  than  they  could  spare  in  order  to 
feed  the  army. 

It  was  at  such  a  time  that  I  went  to  my  home 
county  on  a  little  military  business.  I  stopped 
for  dinner  at  a  house,  the  lavish  hospitality  of 
which  had  been  a  byword  in  the  old  days. 

I  found  before  me  at  dinner  the  remnants  of 
a  cold  boiled  ham,  some  boiled  mustard  greens, 
which  we  Virginians  called  "salad,"  a  pitcher 
of  butter-milk,  some  corn-pones  and  —  nothing 
else. 

I  carved  the  ham,  and  offered  to  serve  it  to 

the  three  women  of  the  household.     But  they 

all    declined.      They    made    their    dinner    on 

salad,   butter-milk,    and   corn-bread,    the   latter 

203 


204  A  Plantation  Heroine 

eaten  very  sparingly,  as  I  observed.  The  ham 
went  only  to  myself  and  to  the  three  convales- 
cent wounded  soldiers,  who  were  guests  in  the 
house. 

Wounded  men  were  at  that  time  guests  in 
every  house  in  Virginia. 

I  lay  awake  that  night  and  thought  over  the 
circumstance.  The  next  morning  I  took  occa- 
sion to  have  a  talk  on  the  old  familiar  terms 
with  the  young  woman  of  the  family,  with 
whom  I  had  been  on  a  basis  of  friendship  in 
the  old  days  that  even  permitted  me  to  kiss  her 
upon  due  and  proper  occasion. 

"  Why  didn't  you  take  some  ham  last  night  ?  " 
I  asked  urgently. 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  want  it,"  she  replied. 

"  Now,  you  know  you're  fibbing,"  I  said. 
"  Tell  me  the  truth,  won't  you  ?  " 

She  blushed,  and  hesitated.  Presently  she 
broke  down  and  answered  frankly :  "  Honestly, 
I  did  want  the  ham.  I  have  hungered  for  meat 
for  months.  But  I  mustn't  eat  it,  and  I  won't. 
You  see  the  army  needs  all  the  food  there  is, 
and  more.  We  women  can't  fight,  though 
I  don't  see  at  all  why  they  shouldn't  let  us, 
and  so  we  are  trying  to  feed  the  fighting  men  — 
and  there  aren't  any  others.  We've  made  up 
our  minds  not  to  eat  anything  that  can  be  sent 
to  the  front  as  rations." 

"You  are  starving  yourselves,"  I  exclaimed. 


A  Plantation  Heroine  205 

"Oh,  no,"  she  said.  "And  if  we  were,  what 
would  it  matter  ?  Haven't  Lee's  soldiers  starved 
many  a  day  ?  But  we  aren't  starving.  You 
see  we  had  plenty  of  salad  and  butter-milk  last 
night.  And  we  even  ate  some  of  the  corn- 
bread.  I  must  stop  that,  by  the  way,  for  corn- 
meal  is  a  good  ration  for  the  soldiers." 

A  month  or  so  later  this  frail  but  heroic 
young  girl  was  laid  away  in  the  Grub  Hill 
church-yard. 

Don't  talk  to  me  about  the  "  heroism  "  that 
braves  a  fire  of  hell  under  enthusiastic  impulse. 
That  young  girl  did  a  higher  act  of  self-sacrifice 
than  any  soldier  who  fought  on  either  side  dur- 
ing the  war  ever  dreamed  of  doing. 


TWO  INCIDENTS   IN  CONTRAST 

INCIDENT     NUMBER    ONE 

THE  Masters  place  at  Amelia  Court  House 
was  a  dream  of  beauty.  Major  Masters 
himself  was  a  man  of  exquisite  taste,  and  his 
wife  and  daughter  had  been  devoted  for  years 
to  the  creation  of  beauty  there. 

They  had  had  the  expert  aid  of  Thomas 
Giles.  Thomas  Giles  was  a  lawyer  by  profes- 
sion, but  being  a  man  of  large  wealth,  and  hav- 
ing nobody  dependent  upon  him,  he  had  devoted 
a  considerable  share  of  his  attention  for  years 
to  his  two  fancies — architecture  and  landscape 
gardening. 

It  had  been  his  long-continued  custom  to 
spend  his  time  from  Friday  afternoon  till  Mon- 
day of  each  week  at  the  Masters  place,  develop- 
ing its  possibilities  of  beauty.  He  had  spent 
both  his  own  money  and  that  of  Major  Masters 
very  lavishly  in  this  endeavor,  and  the  result 
was  a  notable  one. 

When  the  Federal  army  reached   the   court 

house  in   hot  pursuit  of    General    Lee,  during 

that  last   retreat  which  ended   the  war,  there 

was  a  rush  made  by  the  soldiers  for  comfortable 

206 


Two  Incidents  in   Contrast        207 

camping  grounds  on  the  Masters  place.  One 
man  had  even  begun  to  cut  down  a  stately  tree 
for  firewood,  when  the  general  commanding 
rode  up.  Taking  in  the  situation  at  a  glance, 
the  general  turned  to  one  of  his  aids  and  said  : 
"  Take  a  squad  of  twenty  men,  and  drive  every- 
body out  of  that  place  quick.  Then  tell  the 
adjutant-general  to  post  a  close  guard  around 
it  and  allow  no  man  to  enter  it  during  our  stay, 
upon  any  pretence  whatever." 

Then,  turning  to  his  staff  as  the  officer  rode 
away  to  execute  his  orders,  he  said :  "  That 
place  has  cost  years  of  growth  as  well  as  years 
of  intelligent  endeavor  to  create  it.  As  we  are 
not  vandals,  I  shall  not  suffer  it  to  be  destroyed." 

I  regret  that  I  cannot  here  record  the  name 
of  that  officer.      I  would  if  I  knew  it. 


INCIDENT    NUMBER   TWO 

At  McPhersonville,  on  the  coast  of  South 
Carolina,  there  lived  a  young  woman  of  ex- 
traordinary learning. 

The  fame  of  her  learning,  especially  in  bot- 
any, had  even  crossed  the  ocean;  and  it  was 
she  whom  Baron  Von  Humboldt  had  selected 
to  prepare  for  him  —  for  use  in  his  writings  — 
an  account  of  the  flora  of  that  region. 

In  recognition  of  her  scholarly  service,  Baron 
Von  Humboldt  had  sent  to  her  —  each  volume 


208        Two  Incidents  in  Contrast 

inscribed  with  his  own  hand  —  the  only  copy 
ever  owned  in  the  United  States  of  the  Ger- 
man government's  magnificent  edition  de  luxe 
of  "Cosmos." 

It  was  a  work  published  without  regard  to 
expense,  and  in  narrowly  limited  edition,  at  a 
fabulous  price  per  copy. 

When  the  final  collapse  came,  and  Sherman's 
army  was  sweeping  northward  from  Savannah, 
a  detachment  under  the  command  of  a  lieu- 
tenant visited  the  house  of  this  young  woman. 
Building  a  bonfire  in  the  front  yard,  it  pro- 
ceeded to  destroy  all  the  food  that  it  could 
find.  Then,  in  a  spirit  of  pure  vandalism,  the 
lieutenant  ordered  his  men  to  bring  out  and 
burn  the  books  in  that  superb  library.  The 
young  woman  was  in  tears  and  terror,  of  course, 
but  her  scholarly  impulses  rose  superior  to  her 
timid,  feminine  instincts.  She  went  up  to  the 
lieutenant,  coarse  brute  that  he  was,  and  begged 
for  the  preservation  of  her  unique  "Cosmos." 

She  explained  to  him  what  it  was  and  how 
much  it  meant  to  scholarship.  She  begged  him 
to  take  it  with  him  and  present  it  to  Yale,  or 
Harvard,  or  Princeton,  or  to  the  Astor  library, 
or  to  any  other  institution  of  learning  to  which 
it  might  become  a  possession  of  glory. 

He  slapped  her  in  the  face,  and  with  his  own 
hands  threw  the  precious  volumes  into  the 
fire. 


Two  Incidents  in  Contrast  ,     209 

A  nation  at  war  must  select  its  human  instru- 
ments with  regard  to  their  capacity  for  fight- 
ing, and  with  very  little  regard  to  anything 
else.  Whether  the  officer  be  a  gentleman  or 
a  blackguard  is  a  matter  that  counts  for  little 
so  long  as  he  knows  how  to  fight. 

But  I  regret  that  I  cannot  here  record  the 
name  of  this  officer  also. 


HOW   THE   SERGEANT-MAJOR 
TOLD   THE   TRUTH 

SO  far  as  I  know,  the  sergeant-major  never 
told  a  lie  in  his  life ;  but  he  came  very 
near  it  that  night  at  Grahamville. 

Grahamville  is  a  village  on  the  Charleston 
and  Savannah  railroad,  and  this  was  in  1862, 
when  the  enemy  held  the  sea  islands  along 
that  coast.  Whenever  they  landed  and  ad- 
vanced toward  the  railroad,  it  was  our  business 
to  march  down  and  meet  them  at  such  points 
of  vantage  as  the  marshes  and  causeways 
afforded. 

The  battery  had  been  stationed  at  Graham- 
ville about  two  months,  and,  as  the  enemy  had 
been  inactive  all  that  time,  there  was  nothing 
whatever  to  do ;  nothing,  that  is  to  say,  except 
to  practise  with  pistols  on  the  bullet-proof  hide 
of  an  antique  alligator,  which  used  to  lie  upon 
a  log  in  the  swamp  in  front  of  us  sunning  him- 
self and  apparently  rather  enjoying  the  im- 
pingement of  bullets  upon  his  ribs.  We  had 
pretty  well  exhausted  that  amusement ;  so  when 
the  news  came  that  there  was  to  be  a  dance 
at   Tucker's,  —  about   twelve  miles  in    rear   of 


How  He  told  the  Truth         2 1 1 

Grahamville,  —  the  captain,  the  one  lieutenant 
on  duty,  and  the  surgeon  promptly  accepted 
the  invitation.  They  omitted  the  formality  of 
sending  to  headquarters  for  leave  of  absence. 
They  simply  went. 

The  sergeant-major,  who  carried  on  a  volumi- 
nous correspondence  with  various  young  women 
in  different  parts  of  the  Confederacy,  had  letters 
to  write  and  preferred  to  remain  behind.  Be- 
sides that,  his  boots  were  broken  out  on  both 
sides,  and  his  linen  coat  —  the  only  thing  he 
had  that  was  cool  enough  for  such  an  occasion 
in  such  a  climate  —  had  only  one  button  on  it, 
and  that  one  a  black  one  sewed  on  with  white 
thread.  The  sergeant-major  rather  valued  him- 
self upon  his  personal  pulchritude,  and  preferred 
solitude  in  the  camp  to  any  unfavorable  exhibi- 
tion of  himself  and  his  wardrobe.  So  the  ser- 
geant-major was  left  in  command  of  the  battery. 

It  was  on  that  particular  night,  of  course,  that 
the  enemy  concluded  to  make  a  threatening 
landing  on  the  coast  below.  Hurried  orders 
came  from  General  Clingman  for  the  battery  to 
move  forward  at  once.  The  sergeant-major 
received  the  orders,  had  the  assembly  blown, 
and  promptly  moved  forward  with  the  guns. 
He  was  a  very  earnest  and  conscientious  young 
man.  That  is  why  he  came  so  near  telling  lies 
that  night.  He  was  fond  of  his  officers  and 
very  much  devoted  to  their  welfare.     It  would 


212  How  He  told  the  Tj-tcth 

have  gone  hard  with  them  had  their  absence 
become  known  to  the  commanding  general. 

As  the  sergeant-major  rode  along  in  the 
murkiness  of  a  cloudy,  Southern  midnight  at 
the  head  of  the  battery,  General  Clingman  rode 
up  and  asked,  "  Where's  your  captain  ?  " 

"  He's  in  rear,"  said  the  sergeant-major. 
Now,  strictly  speaking,  this  was  the  exact  truth. 
The  captain  was  in  rear  —  twelve  or  fifteen 
miles  in  rear  !  Nevertheless  the  sergeant-major 
felt  an  uncomfortable  consciousness  that  his 
words  conveyed  to  the  mind  of  the  general  an 
impression  that  was  not  quite  accurate.  When 
the  general  inquired  about  the  one  other  officer 
supposed  to  be  on  duty  at  that  time,  the 
sergeant-major  replied  :  "  He  also  is  somewhere 
in  rear  at  the  moment."  You  see  the  sergeant- 
major  was  getting  used  to  this  sort  of  thing. 

The  general  replied ;  "  Well,  it's  no  matter, 
you  can  take  the  orders  and  communicate 
them." 

Thereupon  he  gave  instructions  as  to  the 
disposition  of  the  guns  in  case  of  a  fight.  After 
that  he  rode  to  the  front.  It  was  his  habit  to 
be  at  the  front  as  his  force  approached  an 
enemy. 

An  hour  or  two  later  our  returning  cavalry 
reported  that  the  enemy  had  returned  to  his 
island  camp.  Our  long  night  march  had  gone 
for  nothing.     We  were  a  little  bit  disappointed, 


How  He  told  the  Truth        213 

but  as  we  had  marched  during  all  the  hours  of 
darkness,  and  as  the  gray  was  beginning  to  split 
the  eastern  sky,  we  were  not  very  reluctant  to 
turn  back  towards  camp  and  breakfast. 

But  when,  soon  after  the  return  march  began, 
the  sergeant-major  saw  the  general  riding  up, 
he  felt  a  trifle  uneasy.  You  see  he  was  not  yet 
an  artist  in  prevarication.  His  life-long  habit  of 
telling  the  truth  sat  heavily  upon  him.  Never- 
theless, when  the  general  asked  for  the  captain 
and  lieutenant,  the  sergeant-major  said,  with 
as  much  of  nonchalance  as  he  could  assume : 
"They're  somewhere  in  front,  I  think,  gen- 
eral," and  the  general  rode  away  satisfied. 
When  tb.e  battery  reached  camp,  the  officers 
had  just  returned  from  the  dance  at  Tucker's. 
They  were  frantic  with  apprehension  and  rage 
at  finding  their  command  gone  to  fight  the 
enemy  and  they  not  with  it.  They  were 
minutely  questioning  the  camp  servants  as  to 
the  movement.  And  when  the  sergeant-major 
rode  up  at  the  head  of  the  column  of  guns,  they 
assailed  him  with  a  volley  of  questions,  which, 
if  they  had  been  shells,  would  have  struck  the 
enemy  off  any  field :  the  sergeant-major  rather 
enjoyed  this  part  of  the  proceeding. 

"  What  kind  of  a  time  did  you  have  at  Tuck- 
er's ? "    he  asked. 

"  Oh,  confound  Tucker's ! "  answered  the 
captain.     "  Speak,  can't  you,  man,  and  tell  us 


214  How  He  told  the  Truth 

about  this  thing.     Did  the  general  ask  after  us, 
and  what  did  you  tell  him  ?  " 

"  Well,"  answered  the  sergeant-major,  "  he 
did  ask,  and  I  told  him  the  truth,  but  not  the 
whole  truth.  My  conscience  is  a  little  bit 
bruised  and  sore  over  it,  and  the  next  time  you 
fellows  go  off  to  a  dance  without  letting  the 
general  know,  I'm  going  to  tell  him  the  whole 
truth.     Is  there  anything  to  eat  ? " 


TWO  GENTLEMEN  AT   PETERS- 
BURG 

AT  that  point  where  the  great  mine  was 
blown  up  at  Petersburg,  the  lines  of  the 
two  armies  were  within  fifty  yards  of  each 
other. 

In  the  fearful  slaughter  that  ensued,  the  space 
between  the  rival  breastworks  was  literally 
piled  high  with  dead  men,  lying  one  on  top 
of  the  other.  Only  in  one  other  place,  namely, 
at  Cold  Harbor,  was  there  ever  so  much  of 
slaughter  within  so  small  a  space. 

It  was  evident,  apart  from  all  considerations 
of  decency,  that  for  the  comfort  of  both  sides 
some  arrangement  must  be  made  for  the  burial 
of  these  dead  men.  Neither  side  could  have 
lived  long  in  its  works  otherwise. 

Accordingly,  a  cartel  was  arranged  between 
General  Grant  and  General  Lee.  It  was  stipu- 
lated that  there  should  be  a  cessation  of  hos- 
tilities for  a  specified  number  of  hours  for  the 
purpose  of  burying  the  dead. 

It  was  arranged  that  two  lines  should  be 
formed  twelve  feet  apart  in  the  middle  of  the 
space  between  the  works ;  that  one  line  should 
215 


216        Two  Gentlemen  at  Petersburg 

be  composed  of  Federal  sentinels,  the  other  of 
Confederates ;  that  the  space  between  these  two 
lines  should  be  a  neutral  ground,  accessible  to 
both  sides ;  but  that  no  person  from  either  side 
should  cross  the  line  established  by  the  other 
side.  It  was  agreed  that  the  dead  men  who 
had  fallen  within  the  Confederate  line  should 
be  dragged  to  the  neutral  ground  by  Confed- 
erate soldiers,  and  there  delivered  to  Federal 
troops  to  be  carried  within  their  lines  for  burial. 

There  were  no  Confederate  dead  there,  of 
course.  All  of  our  men  who  had  been  killed 
were  killed  within  our  own  works.  So  every 
corpse  on  our  side  of  the  neutral  ground  was 
dragged  by  a  rope  to  that  common  space  and 
there  delivered  to  its  official  friends. 

It  was  specially  stipulated  in  the  cartel  that 
no  officer  or  soldier  on  either  side  should  take 
advantage  of  the  truce  to  appropriate  property 
of  any  kind  lying  upon  the  field,  whether  upon 
the  one  or  the  other  side  of  the  neutral  ground. 
Swords,  pistols,  sashes,  everything  of  the  kind 
must,  by  agreement,  be  left  precisely  where 
they  were. 

Many  of  us,  of  course,  went  out  to  the  neutral 
ground  to  look  over  the  situation.  There  was 
a  certain  gruesome  delight  even  in  standing 
upon  ground,  where  for  a  month  or  more  it  had 
been  impossible  for  a  twig  or  a  blade  of  grass 
to  grow  without  instant  decapitation,  and  where 


Two  Gentlemen  at  Petersburg       217 

for  months  to  come  it  would  be  equally  impos- 
sible for  anything  having  material  substance  to 
exist.  The  very  turf  itself  had  been  literally 
skinned  from  the  surface  of  the  earth  by  a  con- 
tinuous scything  of  bullets.  For  a  month  it 
had  been  impossible  for  any  soldier  on  either 
side  even  to  shoot  over  the  breastworks,  for  he 
who  tried  to  do  so  was  sure  to  be  instantly  de- 
stroyed. The  fire  on  either  side  had  to  be 
through  carefully  sand-bag-guarded  port  holes. 
And  even  the  port  holes  had  to  be  protected  by 
hanging  blankets  behind  them  to  conceal  the 
sky,  lest  their  darkening  by  a  human  head 
should  invite  a  hailstorm  of  alert  and  waiting 
bullets. 

Of  course  every  man  who,  during  the  truce, 
wandered  over  this  perilous  space  for  an  hour, 
must  have  been  impressed,  if  he  had  any  imagi- 
nation at  all,  with  the  historical  interest  of  the 
occasion.  Every  one  desired  naturally  to  carry 
away  some  memento  of  the  event.  Only  one 
man  yielded  to  this  impulse,  and  he  did  so 
thoughtlessly.  He  was  a  captain  of  Confeder- 
ate infantry. 

He  saw  lying  on  the  ground  a  star  that  had 
been  cut  by  a  bullet  from  some  officer's  coat 
collar. 

It  was  a  worthless  bauble,  valuable  only  as  a 
souvenir.  He  picked  it  up  and  pocketed  it. 
Instantly  he  was  arrested  by  the  Confederate 


2 1 8       Two  Gentlemen  at  Petersburg 

guards  and  taken  before  the  officer  in  command 
of  the  Confederate  line. 

That  officer  immediately  and  with  great  dig- 
nity went  to  the  Federal  commander  and  said : 
"  I  desire  under  the  terms  of  the  cartel  to  sur- 
render this  officer  to  you  for  such  punishment 
as  a  court-martial  of  your  army  may  see  fit  to 
inflict.     He  has  violated  the  cartel." 

"What  has  he  done?"  asked  the  Federal 
officer. 

"He  has  taken  possession  of  property  left 
upon  the  field,  contrary  to  the  terms  of  the 
truce." 

"Would  you  mind  telling  me,"  asked  the  Fed- 
eral officer,  "  the  exact  nature  and  extent  of  his 
offence  ? " 

A  little  explanation  followed,  the  Confederate 
commander  remaining  stern  and  uncompromis- 
ing in  his  determination  to  deliver  the  man  for 
punishment,  asking  no  favors  or  mercies  for 
him,  and  offering  no  apologies  for  that  which 
he  deemed  a  breach  of  honor. 

When  the  Federal  officer  had  learned  the 
exact  facts  of  the  situation,  he  made  the  usual 
military  salute  and  said  to  the  Confederate  com- 
mander :  "  I  thank  you.  You  have  been  very 
honorable  and  very  punctilious,  but  the  officer's 
fault  has  been  merely  one  of  inadvertence.  I 
beg  to  return  him  to  you  with  the  assurance 
that  we  have  no  desire  to  punish  so  brave  a 


Two  Gentlemen  at  Petersburg       2 1 9 

man  as  he  must  be,  in  order  to  hold  his  commis- 
sion in  your  army,  for  an  act  that  involved  no 
intention  of  wrong." 

Here  were  two  brave  men  —  two  gentlemen 
—  met.     Naturally  they  understood  each  other. 


OLD   JONES   AND   THE 
HUCKSTER 

IT  is  a  fixed  principle  of  military  law  that  no 
person  is  allowed  to  sell  supplies  within  the 
lines  of  a  camp  without  permission  of  the  com- 
mandant. 

It  is  also  a  fixed  principle  of  military  law  that 
he  must  sell  only  at  prices  approved  by  the 
commandant. 

I  shall  never  forget  how  I  first  learned  of 
these  military  rules.  We  were  at  Camp  Onward 
and  old  Jones  had  just  become  our  colonel. 

One  day  a  farmer  came  to  the  camp  with  a 
heavily  laden  wagon.  It  was  in  the  summer  of 
1 86 1,  when  food  in  Northern  Virginia  was 
abundant,  and  when  our  money  was  as  good  as 
anybody's. 

Our  farmer  had  among  his  supplies,  dressed 
turkeys,  suckling  pigs,  lamb,  mutton,  water- 
melons, cantaloupes,  string  beans,  Lima  beans, 
green  peas,  and  in  brief  almost  all  those  things 
that  we  read  about  on  the  bill  of  fare  of  a 
swagger  hotel,  kept  on  the  "  American  Plan." 

He  had  butter  also,  and  lard.     He  had  egg- 


Old  Jones  and  the  Huckster       2  2 1 

plants  and  pumpkins,  and  a  great  many  other 
things. 

We  were  a  rather  hungry  lot,  and  were 
strongly  inclined  to  buy  of  him. 

But  this  farmer  had  evidently  made  up  his 
mind  to  get  comfortably  rich  off  that  single 
wagon  load  of  provisions.  Two  years  later  we 
should  not  have  been  surprised  at  his  prices,  but 
at  that  time  we  were  appalled.  Nevertheless, 
some  of  us  were  buying  with  the  recklessness 
of  men  who  do  not  know  at  what  hour  a  bullet 
may  draw  a  red  line  below  all  accounts. 

Just  then  old  Jones  came  out  in  his  yellow 
coat  and  his  pot  hat,  looking  greatly  more  like 
a  farmer  than  the  wagon  man  did.  Speaking 
through  his  nose,  and  with  that  extraordinary 
deliberation  which  always  made  his  conversation 
a  caricature  of  human  speech,  he  asked  :  "  What 
are  you  chargin'  for  turkeys  ?  What  are  you 
chargin'  for  butter  ? "  And  so  on  through  the 
list,  receiving  a  reply  to  each  query,  and  care- 
fully noting  it  in  his  thoroughly  organized  mind. 

Then  he  turned  to  one  of  the  men  and  said : 
"  Send  the  regimental  commissary  to  me." 

When  the  commissary  came  he  said  to  him  : 
"Take  these  supplies,  and  distribute  them 
equitably  among  the  different  messes  according 
to  their  numbers." 

By  this  time  the  farmer  had  become  alarmed. 
He  said  :  "  Who's  goin'  to  pay  for  all  this  ?  " 


222       Old  Jones  and  the  Huckster 

"  I  am,"  said  old  Jones.     "  In  my  own  way." 

"Well,  hold  on,"  said  the  farmer. 

"  No,  I  reckon  we  won't  hold  on,"  said  old 
Jones. 

"  But  I'll  send  for  the  colonel  of  the  regi- 
ment," said  the  farmer. 

Then  old  Jones  replied  with  a  relish  :  "lam 
the  colonel  of  this  regiment.  And  I  have 
ordered  these  food  supplies  distributed  to  the 
men  in  the  messes.  The  regimental  commis- 
sary will  obey  my  orders.  And  as  soon  as  your 
wagon  is  emptied,  you  will  get  out  of  this  camp 
in  a  considerable  of  a  hurry,"  —  perhaps  he  used 
a  shorter  word  than  "considerable,"  —  "or  I'll 
hang  you  in  front  of  headquarters.  There's  no 
court  of  appeals  in  this  camp.  Now  git!"  as 
the  last  of  the  supplies  were  taken  out  of  the 
wagon  by  the  regimental  commissary. 

We  were  all  a  little  bit  sorry  that  the  poor 
farmer  should  lose  his  entire  load.  And  yet 
we  sympathized  with  old  Jones's  remark  as  he 
walked  away. 

"  I'll  teach  these  thieves  that  they  can't  loot 
a  camp  that  I'm  a  runnin'." 


A   DEAD   MAN'S    MESSAGE 

DICK  FULCHER  was  the  best  natured 
man  in  the  battery,  and  he  was  nothing 
else. 

He  was  entirely  ignorant  and  entirely  con- 
tent to  be  so.  He  could  neither  read  nor  write, 
and  we  could  never  persuade  him  to  try  to 
learn.  He  had  nothing  resembling  pride  in  his 
composition  apparently,  nothing  that  it  would 
do  to  call  a  character. 

One  morning  the  alarm  came  that  the  enemy 
had  landed  below,  and  we  were  ordered  hur- 
riedly forward.  Fulcher  had  just  taken  post 
as  stable-guard,  and  was,  therefore,  under  no 
obligation  of  duty  to  go.  He  quietly  threw 
down  the  musket  he  was  carrying,  and,  going 
up  to  the  sergeant-major,  said :  "  Major,  can't 
I  be  taken  off  guard  ?  I  want  to  go  with  the 
battery  into  the  fight." 

His  request  was  granted,  of  course.  He  was 
number  four  at  Joe's  gun ;  number  four  is  the 
man  who  pulls  the  lanyard,  or  string,  that  fires 
the  gun.  When  we  unlimbered  to  the  front 
on  Yemassee  Creek,  within  pistol-shot  range  of 
the  advancing  enemy,  Fulcher  was  laughing  as 
usual,  and  apparently  as  indifferent  to  the  work 
223 


224  A  Dead  Mans  Message 

he  was  doing  as  he  had  been  to  everything  else, 
since  we  had  first  known  him. 

I  remember  wondering,  as  I  watched  him, 
why  a  man  who  felt  so  little  interest  in  the 
dangerous  business  had  gone  out  of  his  way 
as  he  had  done  to  engage  in  it. 

The  fire  of  the  enemy  was  terrific  in  its  de- 
structiveness  from  the  first.  Within  the  first 
three  minutes  we  had  lost  ten  men  and  a  score 
of  horses.  Among  the  men  was  Fulcher.  He 
had  fallen,  shot  through  the  body,  just  as  the 
command  was  given  to  him  to  "fire." 

Lying  there  upon  the  ground,  with  his  life 
ebbing  away,  he  made  a  feeble  effort  to  pull 
the  lanyard ;  but  his  strength  was  too  far  gone, 
and  Joe,  being  short  of  men,  took  his  place. 
He  had  to  stand  astride  the  poor  dying  fellow, 
in  order  to  do  his  work,  for  Fulcher's  wound 
was  beyond  the  possibility  of  a  surgeon's  help. 

After  two  or  three  more  shots  of  the  gun,  Joe 
heard  Fulcher  feebly  calling  to  him:  "Joe  — 
Joe."  Inclining  his  ear,  Joe  received  this  last 
message:  "I'm  done  for,  sergeant.  But  won't 
you  just  write  to  my  father  and  tell  him  I  died 
like  a  man  ?  I'd  like  him  to  know  that  about 
his  only  boy." 

Joe  wrote  the  letter  and  it  was  blotted  with 
tears. 

After  all,  it  is  hard  to  guess  what  a  man  is 
made  of  till  you  know  his  motives. 


A   WOMAN'S    LAST   WORD 

THE  city  of  Richmond  was  in  flames. 
We  were  beginning  that  last  terrible  re- 
treat which  ended  the  war.  Fire  had  been 
set  to  the  arsenal  as  a  military  possession, 
which  must  on  no  account  fall  into  the  enemy's 
hands. 

As  the  flames  spread,  because  of  a  turn  of 
the  wind,  other  buildings  caught.  The  whole 
business  part  of  the  city  was  on  fire.  To  make 
things  worse,  some  idiot  had  ordered  that  all 
the  liquor  in  the  city  should  be  poured  into  the 
gutters. 

The  rivers  of  alcohol  had  been  ignited  from 
the  burning  buildings,  and  in  their  turn  had  set 
fire  to  other  buildings.  It  was  a  time  and  a 
scene  of  unutterable  terror. 

As  we  marched  up  the  fire-lined  street,  with 
the  flames  scorching  the  very  hair  off  our 
horses,  George  Goodsmith  —  the  best  can- 
noneer that  ever  wielded  a  rammer  —  came 
up  to  the  headquarters  squad,  and  said  :  "  Cap- 
tain, my  wife's  in  Richmond.  We've  been  mar- 
ried less  than  a  year.  She  is  soon  to  become 
Q  225 


226  A  Woman  s  Last  Word 

a  mother.  I  beg  permission  to  bid  her  good- 
by.     I'll  join  the  battery  later." 

The  permission  was  granted  readily,  and 
George  Goodsmith  put  spurs  to  his  horse.  He 
had  just  been  made  a  sergeant,  and  was  there- 
fore mounted. 

It  was  in  the  gray  of  the  morning  that  he  hur- 
riedly met  his  wife.  With  caresses  of  the  tender- 
est  kind,  he  bade  her  farewell.  Realizing  for  a 
moment  the  utter  hopelessness  of  our  making 
another  stand  on  the  Roanoke,  or  any  other 
line,  he  said  in  bitterness  of  soul :  "  Why 
shouldn't  I  stay  here  and  take  care  of  you  ? " 

The  woman  straightened  herself  and  replied : 
"  I  would  rather  be  the  widow  of  a  brave  man 
than  the  wife  of  a  coward." 

That  was  their  parting,  for  the  time  was  very 
short.  Mayo's  bridge  across  the  James  River 
was  already  in  flames  when  Goodsmith  peri- 
lously galloped  across  it. 

Three  or  four  days  later,  for  I  never  could 
keep  tab  on  time  at  that  period  of  the  war,  we 
went  into  the  battle  at  Farmville.  Goodsmith 
was  in  his  place  in  command  of  the  piece. 

Just  before  fire  opened  he  beckoned  to  me 
and  I  rode  up  to  hear  what  he  had  to  say. 

"  I'm  going  to  be  killed,  I  think,"  he  said.  "  If 
I  am,  I  want  my  wife  to  know  that  she  is  the 
widow  of  a  —  brave  man.  I  want  her  to  know 
that  I  did  my  duty  to  the  last.     And  —  and  if 


A  Woman  s  Last  Word  227 

you  live  long  enough,  and  this  thing  don't  kill 
Mary  —  I  want  you  to  tell  the  little  one  about 
his  father." 

Goodsmith's  premonition  of  his  death  was  one 
of  many  that  were  fulfilled  during  the  war. 

A  moment  later  a  fearful  struggle  began.  At 
the  first  fire  George  Goodsmith's  wife  became 
the  "widow  of  a  brave  man."  His  body  was 
heavy  with  lead. 

His  son,  then  unborn,  is  now  a  successful 
broker  in  a  great  city.  There  is  nothing  par- 
ticularly knightly  or  heroic  about  him,  for  this 
is  not  a  knightly  or  heroic  age.  But  he  takes 
very  tender  care  of  his  mother  —  that  "widow 
of  a  brave  man." 


AN    INCOMPLETE   STORY 

WHEN  General  Field  came  to  Cairo,  Illinois, 
after  the   war,  I    welcomed    him   with 
especial  heartiness. 

I  was  a  little  bit  lonely,  lacking  comrades  in 
sympathy  with  me. 

General  Field  had  been  my  drillmaster  at 
Ashland,  at  the  war's  beginning.  Later,  after 
he  became  a  great  general,  I  had  many  times 
been  of  his  following  in  raids  and  scouts,  and 
other  military  expeditions. 

Like  all  the  rest  of  us  at  the  end  of  the  war, 
General  Field  was  very  poor.  He  had  come  to 
Cairo  to  engage  in  business,  and  had  not  been 
able  to  bring  his  family  with  him.  So  he  rented 
a  bachelor  room  in  the  bank  building  in  which 
my  office  was  situated,  and  we  two  used  to  spend 
the  evenings  together  in  front  of  my  office  fire. 

At  that  time  General  Don  Carlos  Buell  was 
operating  a  coal  mine  in  Kentucky,  some  dis- 
tance up  the  Ohio  River.  He  sold  his  coal 
through  the  commission  house  for  which  I  was 
attorney. 

When  he  came  to  Cairo,  he,  also,  usually  spent 
his  evenings  in  my  office. 
228 


An  Incomplete  Story  229 

One  evening  General  Field  was  smoking  a 
long  pipe  before  my  fire,  and  he  and  I  were 
chatting  about  war  times  —  we  hadn't  yet  got 
far  enough  away  from  the  war  to  regard  any 
other  topic  as  worthy  of  intelligent  conversation. 

"  The  saddest  part  of  it  all,  to  us  of  the  old 
army  at  least,"  said  General  Field,  "  is  the  break- 
ing up  of  old  friendships.  There's  Buell,  now. 
He  and  I  once  tented  together,  messed  together, 
slept  under  the  same  blankets  together,  and, 
without  any  blankets  at  all,  under  the  same 
frozen  sky ;  marched  together,  fought  together, 
suffered  together,  and  endured  together.  Once 
we  thought  of  each  other  as  brothers  might. 
Now,  if  we  should  meet,  he  would  refuse  even  to 
shake  my  hand.  He  would  regard  me  as  a 
rebel  —  to  him  anathema  maranatha." 

At  this  moment  came  a  knock  at  the  door. 
I  opened  it,  and  to  my  consternation  there 
stood  General  Buell. 

My  first  impulse  was  to  say  to  him  that  I 
was  overengaged  that  evening,  and  couldn't 
see  him.  My  second  was  to  invite  him  to  my 
bedroom  for  a  special  conference,  for  which  I 
could  profess  to  have  been  longing.  My  third 
was  to  fabricate  the  story  of  a  telegram,  which 
should  call  him  immediately  to  the  house  of  the 
head  of  the  firm. 

Feeling  that  none  of  these  devices  would  an- 
swer the  purpose,   I  thought  of   the  coal-shed 


230  An  Incomplete  Story 

below ;  but  I  remembered  that  there  was  no 
gas-burner  there,  and  the  night  was  rather  a 
dark  one. 

Meantime,  General  Buell  was  catching  cold 
in  the  hall.  So  at  last  I  invited  him  in,  taking 
pains  to  call  him  only  by  his  title,  not  mention- 
ing his  name.  As  he  entered,  Field,  who  was 
always  scrupulous  in  attention  to  the  little  nice- 
ties of  courtesy,  arose  to  receive  the  stranger. 

When  the  two  gentlemen  had  bowed  to  each 
other,  —  for  it  was  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  in- 
troduce them,  if  I  could  help  it,  —  I  turned  to 
General  Buell  and  said  :  "  General,  I'm  afraid 
there  is  a  little  discrepancy  in  the  measurement 
of  those  last  coal  barges.  If  you  have  your 
memorandum  book  with  you,  we'll  go  to  the 
outer  office  and  straighten  the  thing  up.  The 
book-keepers  are  bothered  about  it." 

Alas !  My  little  device  came  to  nothing. 
Buell  had  caught  sight  of  Field,  and  Field  had 
looked  upon  Buell.  Though  years  of  hard  cam- 
paigning had  intervened  since  they  had  last 
met,  each  recognized  the  other  instantly,  and 
after  a  moment's  hesitation  each  threw  himself 
into  the  other's  arms. 

"  Why,  it's  Buell !  " 

"  Why,  it's  Field  !  " 

I  can't  tell  the  rest  of  this  story,  because  I 
didn't  stay  to  see  it.  I  don't  like  to  see  two 
men  hugging  each  other  with  tears  in  their  eyes. 


RANDOM    FACTS 

ILLUSTRATIVE    OF    SOUTHERN    SOLDIER 
CONDITIONS 

WE  soldiers  of  the  Southern  army  lacked 
many  things.  Sometimes  we  lacked 
almost  everything.  We  did  not  always  have 
clothes,  but  when  we  had  any,  they  were  apt  to 
be  good  ones ;  they  were  made  of  cadet  gray 
cloth,  imported  from  England  through  the  block- 
ade. And  those  Englishmen  have  a  habit  of 
making  uncommonly  good  cloths. 

We  were  often  without  shoes ;  but  when  we 
had  shoes,  they  also  came  from  England,  and 
were  thoroughly  good,  both  in  material  and 
make. 

But  towards  the  end  of  the  war,  we  lacked 
many  essential  things.  We  lacked  medicines 
for  one  thing,  and  quinine,  especially.  I  re- 
member that  one  gentlewoman  was  deemed  a 
peculiar  patriot,  because  she  got  through  the 
lines  with  one  hundred  and  forty  ounce  bottles 
of  quinine  hung  inside  her  hoop-skirt. 

For  lack  of  that  and  other  drugs,  our  sur- 
geons had  to  resort  to  many  substitutions. 
231 


232  Random  Facts 

Some  of  these  were  discoveries  of  permanent 
value.  That  is  why  the  medical  profession  has 
studied  with  interest  the  records  of  our  South- 
ern surgeon-general's  department,  now  in  pos- 
session of  the  war  department  at  Washington. 

These  records,  it  is  said,  contribute  more  than 
any  other  like  documents  to  the  science  of 
medicine. 

Another  thing  that  we  terribly  lacked  was 
gunpowder  —  the  one  supreme  agent  of  all  war- 
fare. Our  fire  was  often  compulsorily  made  as 
light  as  possible,  in  order  to  spare  our  cartridge 
boxes. 

To  supply  this  rudimentary  need,  the  women 
of  the  country  diligently  dug  up  the  earthen 
floors  of  all  their  smokehouses,  and  all  their 
tobacco  barns,  and  rendered  out  the  nitre  they 
contained.  Some  of  them  even  destroyed  their 
tobacco  crops  by  boiling,  in  order  to  extract  the 
precious  salt  necessary  to  the  destruction  of 
their  enemy. 

In  the  cities,  our  womenkind  were  requested 
to  preserve  and  deliver  to  government  collectors 
all  those  slops  that  contain  nitre. 

It  was  in  this  way  alone  that  we  got  gun- 
powder enough  to  maintain  resistance  to  the 
end.  And  we  had  equally  to  pinch  in  other 
ways  in  order  that  we  might  continue  to  be 
"fighting  men." 

All  the  window-weights  in  all  the  houses,  and 


Random  Facts  233 

all  the  other  leaden  things  that  could  be  melted 
down,  were  converted  into  bullets.  Even  then 
we  ran  dreadfully  short  towards  the  end  of  the 
war.  At  Petersburg,  good  soldiers  felt  it  to  be 
their  duty  to  spend  all  their  spare  time  in  col- 
lecting the  multitudinous  bullets  with  which  the 
ground  was  everywhere  strewn.  These  battered 
missiles  turned  into  the  arsenals  were  remoulded 
and  came  back  to  us  in  the  form  of  effective, 
fixed  ammunition. 

When  we  marched  to  meet  Grant  in  the  Wil- 
derness, in  the  spring  of  1864,  we  were  about 
the  most  destitute  army  that  ever  marched  to 
meet  anybody,  anywhere.  We  had  nothing  to 
transport,  and  we  had  no  transportation. 

At  the  beginning  of  every  campaign  it  is 
customary  for  the  commanding  general  to  issue 
an  order,  setting  forth  the  allotment  of  baggage 
wagons  to  officers  and  men.  Just  before  we 
marched  that  spring  some  wag  in  the  army  had 
printed  and  circulated  a  mock  order  from  Gen- 
eral Lee,  a  copy  of  which  now  lies  before  me. 

General  Orders,  Number  i. 
Headquarters,  Army  of  Northern  Virginia, 
April  20,  1864. 
The  allotment  of  baggage  wagons  to  the  officers  and 
men  of  the  Army   of  Northern  Virginia  during  the  com- 
ing campaign  will  be  as  follows  :  — 

To  every  thirty  officers  .  .  .  No  baggage  wagon. 
To  every  three  hundred  men  .   .  .       Ditto. 

(Signed)  Robert  E.  Lee,  General. 


234  Random  Facts 

This  order  was  a  good-natured  forgery,  of 
course.  Nevertheless  it  was  carried  out  to  the 
letter.  The  fact  is  that  we  had  no  baggage  and 
no  baggage  wagons.  The  only  baggage  wagons 
I  ever  heard  of  in  connection  with  that  campaign 
were  a  few  that  General  D.  H.  Hill  summoned 
for  a  special  occasion.  His  musicians  put  in  a 
petition  at  the  beginning  of  the  summer's  work 
for  wagons  to  carry  their  instruments.  He 
assented  instantly,  and  ordered  the  wagons 
brought  up.  As  soon  as  the  instruments  were 
comfortably  deposited  within  them,  he  turned 
to  his  quartermaster  and  said :  "  Send  those 
wagons  to  Richmond."  Then  turning  to  his 
adjutant  he  said:  "Have  muskets  issued  to 
these  men  immediately." 

General  D.  H.  Hill  was  not  a  man  from  whose 
orders  anybody  under  him  was  disposed  to 
appeal. 

We  entered  that  campaign  stripped  almost  to 
the  buff.  We  had  no  tents,  even  for  the  highest 
officers.  We  had  no  canteens.  We  had  no 
haversacks.  We  had  no  knapsacks.  We  had 
no  oilcloths  to  sleep  on.  We  had  no  tin  cups. 
We  had  almost  no  cooking  utensils  and  almost 
no  blankets.  We  had  no  shoes,  and  our  socks 
had  long  ago  been  worn  out.  We  had  an  aver- 
age of  one  overcoat  to  every  thousand  men. 

It  was  in  this  condition  of  destitution  that 
we  entered  the  battles  in  the  Wilderness.     The 


Random  Facts  235 

Federal  army  was  as  much  oversupplied  as  we 
were  underfurnished  with  all  the  necessaries  of 
campaigning.  What  with  a  perfectly  equipped 
quartermaster's  department,  a  sanitary  commis- 
sion volunteering  superfluous  tin  cups  and  every- 
thing else  and  with  other  sources  of  lavish  supply, 
public  and  private,  every  Federal  soldier  entered 
the  campaign  carrying  about  three  times  as 
much  as  any  soldier  should  carry.  The  moment 
there  was  fighting  to  be  done,  they  shed  all 
these  things  —  as  a  man  throws  off  his  overcoat 
when  there  is  work  to  do. 

In  the  shiftings  and  changes  of  position  that 
occurred  during  that  most  irregular  of  all 
possible  contests,  we  were  thrown  often  into 
positions  where  the  shedding  had  been  done. 
The  first  thought  of  every  man  of  us  was  to 
equip  himself  with  such  necessaries  as  were 
lying  about.  It  took  us  a  week  to  get  rid  of 
the  superfluous  plunder,  and  reduce  ourselves 
again  to  the  condition  of  soldiers  in  light  march- 
ing order. 

The  one  worst  lack  of  all  we  could  not  supply 
in  this  way.  That  was  the  lack  of  food.  It 
was  an  army  of  starving  men  that  fought  those 
battles  in  the  Wilderness.  It  was  an  army  of 
starving  men  that  confronted  Grant  at  Spott- 
sylvania.  It  was  an  army  of  starving  men  that 
faced  the  guns  at  Cold  Harbor,  at  Bottom's 
bridge,   and  all   the   way  to    Petersburg.     Not 


236  Random  Facts 

until  we  were  established  in  the  works  there, 
did  any  man  have  enough  food  in  a  week  to 
supply  his  physical  needs  for  a  day.  I  have 
elsewhere  in  these  stories  illustrated  this  fact 
somewhat,  but  as  it  was  the  central  fact  in 
connection  with  that  campaign,  it  seems  to  me 
important  here  to  state  it  in  its  fulness. 

At  Petersburg  we  began  to  get  something 
like  regular  rations,  though  they  were  very 
meagre  and  of  extremely  bad  quality.  It  was, 
perhaps,  under  the  influence  of  this  prolonged 
starvation  and  hard  work  that  the  men  fell 
victims  to  the  great  religious  revival  of  that 
time.  It  was  the  ecstasy  of  anchorites.  It 
proved,  if  anything  ever  did,  the  efficacy  of 
fasting  as  an  inducement  to  fervid  prayer. 
Saint  Simeon  Stylites  perched  on  top  of  his 
tower  was  no  better  subject  of  religious  enthu- 
siasm than  were  these  worn  out  and  starved 
veterans,  whose  cause  was  an  object  of  per- 
petual worship.  They  believed  no  longer  in 
themselves ;  they  no  longer  looked  even  to 
their  generals  for  results.  The  time  and  the 
mood  had  come  when  they  trusted  God  alone  to 
give  them  victory.  Starvation  had  made  them 
devotees. 


MY    FRIEND    PHIL1 

TO  begin  with,  Phil  was  black. 
The  reader  will  please  understand  that 
the  word  "black"  is  here  used  in  its  literal,  and 
not  in  its  conventional,  sense.  Phil  was  actually 
as  well  as  ethnologically  black.  There  was  no 
trace  of  a  lighter  tint  anywhere  in  his  complex- 
ion. Not  a  suspicion  of  brown  appeared  in  his 
cheeks,  and  even  his  great  thick  lips,  protrud- 
ing far  beyond  the  outposts  of  his  nose,  were 
as  sable  as  the  rest  of  his  face.  It  was  all  a 
dead  black,  too,  unaccompanied  by  that  lustre 
which,  by  surface  reflection,  relieves  the  shadow 
upon  commonplace  African  faces. 

And  nobody  knew  all  this  better  than  Phil 
did. 

"  Phil  ain't  none  o'  yer  coffee-colored  niggas," 
he  would  say  in  moments  of  exultation,  when 
his  mood  was  to  straighten  his  broad  shoulders 
and  boast  a  little.  "  Phil  ain't  none  o'  yer 
coffee-colored  niggas,  ner  none  o'  yer  alapacker 

x1\i\%  story  was  first  printed  in  the  Galaxy  for  December, 
1875.  It  is  here  reprinted  by  courteous  permission  of  Colonel 
William  Conant  Church,  now  of  the  Army  and  Navy  Journal, 
under  whose  editorship  the  Galaxy  was  made  a  conspicuous 
and  honorable  factor  in  American  literature. 
237 


238  My  Friend  Phil 

niggas,  nuther.  Ise  black,  I  is.  Dat's  sho'. 
Ain't  got  no  bacon-rind  shine  in  my  skin ;  but  I 
jes'  tell  yer  what,  mastah,  Phil  kin  jes'  take  the 
very  shut  offen  dem  shiny  niggas  an'  hoff  an' 
hoff  niggas,  when  't  comes  to  de  wuk.  Drive  ? 
Kin  I  ?  Kin  Phil  drive  ?  What  yer  mean, 
mastah,  by  axin'  such  a  question  ?  " 

Nobody  had  asked  Phil  such  a  question ;  but 
Phil  had  some  remarks  that  he  wanted  to  make 
on  the  subject  of  his  accomplishments  in  this 
respect,  and  was  disposed  to  answer  what  he 
wished  somebody  would  ask. 

"  Drive  ?  Co'se  I  kin.  Der  never  was  a  hoss 
ner  mule  yit  whatever  had  a  mouf  an'  two 
laigs  dat  Phil  can't  han'le,  an'  yer  better  b'lieve, 
mastah,  Phil  can  plaunt  de  wheel  'twix'  de  acorn 
an'  de  shell." 

If  I  report  Phil's  boastings,  it  is  only  because 
they  constitute  too  large  a  proportion  of  what 
he  said  to  be  omitted.  I  do  so  to  confirm,  not 
to  gainsay  them,  or  to  hold  their  author  up  to 
ridicule. 

He  was  my  friend,  the  'faithfulest  one  I  ever 
knew,  and  now  he  is  dead. 

If  he  boasted  now  and  then,  no  one  could 
have  had  a  better  right.  His  was  the  pride  of 
performance,  and  not  the  vanity  of  pretension. 

Phil  was  a  Virginian  —  and  a  gentleman  in 
his  way  —  and  a  slave,  though  I  doubt  if  he 
ever  suspected  his  gentility,  or  felt  his  bondage 


My  Friend  Phil  239 

as  a  burden  in  the  least.  He  had  no  aspirations 
for  freedom  or  for  anything  else,  I  think,  except 
jollity  and  comfort.  I  do  not  say  that  this  was 
well,  but  it  was  a  fact. 

My  acquaintance  with  Phil  began  when  I  was 
a  half-grown  boy.  Until  that  time  I  had  lived 
in  a  free  state,  so  that  when  I  had  returned  to 
the  land  of  my  fathers,  and  become  an  inmate  of 
the  old  family  mansion  in  one  of  the  south-side 
counties  of  Virginia,  the  plantation  negro  was  a 
fresh  and  very  interesting  study  to  me. 

On  the  morning  after  my  arrival,  as  I  lay  in 
the  antique  carved  bed  assigned  to  me,  wonder- 
ing at  the  quaint  picturesqueness  of  my  sur- 
roundings, and  the  delightful  strangeness  of  the 
life  which  I  was  now  in  contact  with  for  the 
first  time,  a  weird,  musical  sound,  of  singular 
power  and  marvellous  sweetness,  floated  through 
the  open  dormer  windows,  borne  upon  the  breath 
of  such  a  June  morning  as  I  had  never  before 
seen.  I  listened,  but  could  make  nothing  of  it 
by  guessing.  It  was  music,  certainly,  at  least  a 
"concord  of  sweet  sounds."  It  rose  and  fell 
like  the  ground  swell  of  the  sea,  and  was  as  full 
of  melody  and  sweetness  as  is  the  song  of  birds, 
but  it  was  as  destitute  as  they  of  anything  like 
a  tune.  It  began  nowhere,  and  went  nowhither. 
I  had  no  memory  of  anything  with  which  to 
compare  it,  and  could  conceive  of  no  throat  or 
instrument  capable  of  producing  such  a  sound. 


240  My  Friend  Phil 

On  the  great  piazza  below,  at  the  front  of  the 
house,  sat  the  master  of  the  mansion.  Of  him  I 
straightway  made  inquiry. 

"  What  is  that  ?  "  I  asked  curiously. 

"Phil,"  answered  my  uncle. 

"And  who  is  'Phil,'  and  what  on  earth  is  he 
doing,  and  especially  how  is  he  doing  it  ?  " 

"  He  is  calling  the  hogs,  and  you  may  be  sure 
he  is  doing  it  well.  If  you'll  walk  up  to  that 
skirt  of  woods,  you  can  put  your  other  questions 
to  him  in  person.  He  is  not  shy  or  difficult  of 
approach.  Introduce  yourself  —  be  sure  to  tell 
him  whose  son  you  are." 

My  uncle's  face  wore  an  amused  smile  as  I 
walked  away.     He  could  imagine  the  sequel. 

In  the  edge  of  the  timber  stood  a  tall,  broad- 
shouldered,  brawny  negro  man.  He  was  singu- 
larly ugly,  but  with  a  countenance  so  full  of 
good  humor  that  I  was  irresistibly  attracted 
by  it  from  the  first.  At  his  feet  stood  great 
baskets  of  corn,  and  around  him  were  gathered 
a  hundred  or  more  swine,  busily  eating  the 
breakfast  he  was  dispensing.  As  I  approached, 
his  hat  —  what  there  was  of  it  —  was  doffed. 
I  was  greeted  with  a  fabulous  bow,  apparently 
meant  to  be  half  a  tribute  of  respect,  and  half  a 
bit  of  buffoonery,  indulged  in  for  my  amusement 
or  his  own. 

"  Good  mawnin',  young  mastah.  I  hope  I 
see  you  well  dis  mawnin'." 


My  Friend  Phil  241 

"Thank  you,  I'm  very  well,"  I  replied. 
"You're   Phil,    I    suppose?" 

"  You're  right,  fo'  dis  wunst,  young  mastah. 
Ise  Phil  toe  be  sho'.  Ax  der  hawgs — dey  done 
know  me." 

"Well,  Phil,  I'm  glad  to  make  your  acquaint- 
ance.    I'm  your  mas'  Jo's  son." 

"What  dat?  Mas'  Jo's  son!  Mas'  Jo's 
son  ! !  MY  MAS'  JO'S  SON  ! ! !  Lem  me 
shake  han's  wid  you,  mastah.  Jes'  to  think ! 
Mas'  Jo's  son  !  An'  Phil  done  live  to  shake 
han's  wid  mas'  Jo's  son.  Why,  my  young 
mastah,  I  done  raise  your  father !  Him  an'  me 
done  play  ma'bles  togeder  many  and  many  a 
time.  We  was  boys  togeder  right  heah,  on  dis 
very  identumcal  plauntation.  Used  to  go  in 
swimmin'  togeder,  an'  go  fishin'  an'  steal  de 
mules  out'n  de  stables  Sundays,  an'  ride  races 
wid  'em  and  git  cotched,  too,  sometimes  when 
ole  mastah  git  home  from  chu'ch.  My  Mastah. 
But  Ise  glad  to  see  yer." 

All  this  while  the  great  giant  was  wrenching 
my  hand  well-nigh  off,  laughing  and  weeping 
alternately,  and  stamping  with  a  delight  which 
could  find  no  other  vent  than  in  physical  exer- 
tion. I  was  naturally  anxious  to  divert  the  con- 
versation into  some  other  and  less  personal 
channel,  and  managed  to  do  so  presently  by 
asking  Phil  to  give  me  a  specimen  of  his  hog- 
calling  cry,  which  I  wished  to  hear  near  at  hand. 


242  My  Friend  Phil 

That  performance  over,  we  talked  again.  I 
began  by  saying  I  had  never  heard  any  one  call 
hogs  in  that  way  before. 

"  Dat's  jes'  it,  mastah,"  he  replied.  "  Folks 
don't  understan'  de  science  o'  hog-callin'.  Dey 
says  '  p-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-r  'og,'  when  de  hogs  ain't  po' 
at  all,  but  fat  as  buttah.  Dey  got  to  git  '  hog ' 
in  some  ways  so  dey  thinks.  But  dey  ain't  no 
sense  in  dat.  Hogs  don't  understan'  dat.  Dey 
can't  talk  an'  don't  understan'  de  meanin'  o' 
talk  words.  You  mus'  jes'  let  'em  know  dat 
when  you  wants  'em  to  come  youse  gwine  to 
make  a  noise,  de  like  o'  which  ain't  in  heaven 
or  yuth.  Den  dey  gits  to  knowin'  what  dat 
means.  Dat's  my  way.  When  I  fetch  a  yell 
at  'em,  dey  jes'  raise  der  yeahs,  an'  say  to  der 
se'f :  'Dat  dar's  Phil,  fo'  sho',  an'  Phil's  de  big, 
ugly,  black  nigga  wid  de  bauskets  o'  cawn.' 
When  you  says  '  Phil,'  you  mean  mastah's  big 
nigga  what  wuks  in  de  fiel',  an'  plays  de  banjo, 
an'  goes  fishin' ;  but  when  de  hogs  says  '  Phil,' 
dey  mean  a  big  black  fella,  wid  a  big  yell  into 
him,  an'  de  bauskets  o'  cawn.  An'  you  bettah 
b'lieve  dat  makes  'em  jump  up  an'  clap  dey  han's 
fo'  joy,  jes'  like  de  nigga  does  when  he  gets 
religion  'nuff  to  make  him  shout,  an'  not  'nuff 
to  keep  him  offen  the  hen  roos's.  If  a  nigga 
gits  'nuff  religion  to  keep  him  from  stealin', 
it's  a  mistake.  Dey  don't  never  mean  to  do 
it,  and   when  dey  does,  dey  ain't  glad  a  bit, 


My  Friend  Phil  243 

an'  dey  hurries  up  an'  sends  de  surplage 
back." 

Phil's  respect  for  what  he  called  "niggas"  was 
exceedingly  small,  and  it  was  his  greatest  pleas- 
ure in  life  to  demonstrate  their  inferiority  and 
emphasize  their  shortcomings  in  a  hundred  ways. 

He  was  "head  man"  of  the  hoe  hands  — 
which  is  to  say  he  hoed  the  leading  row  of 
tobacco  hills,  and  was  charged  with  the  duty  of 
superintending  the  work  of  the  others.  It  was 
his  delight  to  keep  his  work  so  far  in  advance 
that  he  must  now  and  then  set  his  hoe  in  the 
ground,  and  walk  back  to  inspect  the  progress, 
and  criticise  the  performance  of  slower  workers 
than  he.  In  all  this  there  was  no  spice  of 
uncharitableness  or  malice,  however.  He  wished 
his  fellows  well,  and  had  no  desire  to  hurt  their 
feelings;  but  he  keenly  enjoyed  the  fun  of  out- 
doing them,  and  laughing  at  their  inability  to 
cope  with  him. 

It  was  during  wheat  harvest,  however,  that 
Phil  was  in  his  full  glory.  The  rapidity  with 
which  he  could  "cradle"  wheat  was  a  matter 
of  astonishment  to  every  one  who  knew  him, 
and,  what  was  more  wonderful  still,  he  was 
able  to  maintain  a  distinctly  "spurting"  speed 
all  day  and  every  day. 

"  Phil,"  his  master  would  say,  as  the  men 
entered  the  field  on  the  first  day,  "  I  want  no 
racing  now;  it's  too  hot." 


244  My  Friend  Phil 

"  Now  you  heah  dat,  you  slow  niggas ! 
Mastah  says  Phil  mustn't  kill  his  niggas,  an' 
de  onliest  way  to  save  yo'  lives  is  fer  yer  not 
to  try  to  follow  me.  Jes'  take  yo'  time,  boys. 
Race  a  little  among  yo'selves,  if  yer  want  to, 
but  don'  yer  try  to  get  a  look  at  de  heels  o' 
my  boots,  if  yer  don'  want  to  go  to  de  bushes 
an'  has  any  intrus'  in  mastah." 

A  negro,  exhausting  himself  in  a  race,  lies 
down  in  the  bushes  to  cool  off  and  recuperate, 
and  hence  the  winner  of  the  race  is  said  to 
send  the  others  "to  the  bushes." 

Phil's  preliminary  remarks  were  sure  to  ex- 
asperate his  fellows  and  put  them  on  their  met- 
tle. Silently  they  would  determine  to  "  push  " 
him,  and  the  utmost  vigilance  of  the  master 
was  taxed  to  prevent  dangerous  overexertion. 
If  the  reapers  were  left  alone  for  half  an  hour, 
several  of  them  would  be  sure  to  overtask  their 
strength,  and  retire  exhausted  to  the  friendly 
shade  of  the  nearest  thicket.  But  they  never 
succeeded  in  coming  up  with  Phil,  or  in  so  tir- 
ing him  that  he  was  not  ready  for  a  dance  or 
a  tramp  when  night  came. 

He  was  a  strong  man,  rejoicing  in  his  strength 
always ;  but  there  was  one  thing  he  would  not 
do  —  he  would  not  work  for  himself. 

His  master  was  one  of  those  who  hoped  for 
gradual  emancipation,  as  many  Virginians  did, 
and  thought  it  his  duty  to  prepare  his  negroes 


My  Friend  Phil  245 

for  freedom,  so  far  as  it  was  possible  for  him 
to  do  so.  Among  other  means  to  this  end,  he 
encouraged  each  to  make  and  save  money  on 
his  own  account.  Each  was  expected  to  culti- 
vate a  "patch"  of  his  own.  Their  master 
gave  them  the  necessary  time  and  the  use  of 
the  mules  whenever  their  crops  needed  atten- 
tion. 

In  this  way  he  thought  to  train  them  in 
habits  of  voluntary  industry  and  thrift ;  and 
some  of  them,  having  no  necessary  expenses 
to  bear,  accumulated  very  pretty  little  hoards 
of  cash  from  the  sale  of  their  crops  every 
year.  But  Phil  would  not  raise  a  crop  for 
himself. 

"  What  I  want  to  raise  a  crop  for  ?  "  he  would 
ask.  "  I  don*  want  no  money,  on'y  a  quarter 
sometimes  to  buy  a  banjo  string  or  a  fish  line, 
an'  I  get  plenty  o'  quarters  pitched  at  me  when 
I  hoi'  de  gentlemen's  hosses.  I  don'  want  no 
money,  an'  I  wouldn't  know  what  to  do  wid 
it  if  I  had  it.  My  mastah  takes  good  care  o' 
me,  an  's  long  as  dar's  a  piece  o'  meat  in  de 
smokehouse,  Phil  knows  he's  gwine  to  have 
plenty  to  eat.  I  ain't  gwine  to  earn  no  money 
an'  be  cas'in'  'flections  on  my  mastah.  My 
mastah  gives  me  mo'  clo'es  'an  I  kin  war  out ; 
an'  what  de  devil  I  want  to  be  makin'  money 
for,  I  donno." 

It  was  of  no  use  to  argue  the  matter.     His 


246  My  Friend  Phil 

mind  was  quite  made  up,  and  there  was  no  pos- 
sibility of  changing  it. 

Phil's  marital  philosophy  was  unique.  He 
changed  wives  half  a  dozen  times  while  I  knew 
him,  but  one  set  of  rules  governed  his  choice  in 
every  instance.  There  were  certain  qualifica- 
tions of  a  rather  singular  sort,  which  he  deemed 
essential  in  a  wife.  She  must  not  live  on  the 
plantation  for  one  thing,  or  on  one  of  those  im- 
mediately adjoining,  "  'Cause  den  we're  sho'  to 
see  too  much  o'  one  anoder,  an'  '11  git  tired  o' 
de  'rangement."  In  the  second  place  he  would 
marry  none  but  old  women,  "  'Cause  de  young 
ones  is  no  'count  anyway.  Dey  don'  half  take 
car'  o'  dey  husban's  stockin's  and  things.  'F 
you  want  holes  in  yer  stockin's  an'  buttons  off 
yer  shut  collahs,  jes'  you  marry  a  young  gal." 
The  third  requisite  was  that  the  wife  should  be 
a  slave,  and  the  daughter  of  slaves  on  both 
sides.  This  qualification  he  insisted  upon,  even 
in  the  choice  of  masculine  associates.  His  con- 
tempt for  "free  niggas  "  was  supreme,  almost 
sublime.  He  neglected  no  possible  opportunity 
of  villifying  them,  and  practised  no  sort  of 
economy  in  his  expenditure  of  invective  upon 
them. 

Most  of  the  negroes  —  in  Virginia,  at  least  — ■ 
were  very  religious.  Naturally  their  religion 
was  intensely  emotional  in  its  character,  —  ec- 
static, sombre,  gloomy,  —  and  quite  as  naturally 


My  Friend  Phil  247 

it  was  largely  colored  with  superstition.  But  re- 
ligion of  this  kind  had  no  charm  for  Phil,  who, 
as  the  reader  may  possibly  have  guessed,  prided 
himself  on  being  strictly  logical  in  all  his  views 
and  actions. 

"  Bro'  Ben,"  he  said  to  one  of  his  fellows  one 
day,  "youse  done  got  religion,  I  heah.  Any- 
way, your  face  is  twict  as  long  as  it  ought  to  be. 
Has  yer  got  religion  fo'  sho'  ?" 

"  Now,  Phil,  I  don't  want  none  o'  your  wicked- 
ness.    Bless  de  Lord,  \sq  got  religion." 

"  Oh,  you  is  got  it,  is  you  ?  Now  lemme  ax 
yer  a  question  or  two.  Youse  got  religion,  yer 
say  ?  " 

Ben:  "Yes,  Ise  got  religion." 

Phil :  "  Well,  den,  you're  gwine  to  heaven 
after  while  —  when  yer  dies?" 

Ben  :  "  Yes,  Ise  got  de  'surance  o'  dat,  bro' 
Phil." 

Phil :  "  An'  you'd  'a'  gone  to  hell,  if  you 
hadn't  got  de  'surance,  as  you  calls  it,  wouldn't 
you  ? " 

Ben:  "If  I'd  'a'  died  in  my  sins,  course  I'd 
'a'  gone  to  hell." 

Phil :  "Well  now  fo'  a  nigga  what's  jes'  made 
his  'rangements  to  keep  out'n  hell  an'  git  into 
heaven,  youse  got  de  mos'  onaccountable  long 
face  I  ever  did  see,  an'  dat's  all  about  it." 

When  Ben  had  retired  in  disgust,  I  remon- 
strated with  Phil. 


248  My  Friend  Phil 

"  What  do  you  tease  Ben  for,  Phil  ?  "  I  asked. 
"  You  know  better  than  to  make  fun  of  religion." 

"Course  I  do,  mastah,  an'  dat's  jes'  it.  Ben 
ain't  got  no  religion,  an'  I  knows  it.  He's  jes' 
puttin'  on  dat  solemncholy  face  to  fool  de  good 
Lord  wid.  Ben'll  steal,  mastah,  whenever  he 
gits  a  chaunce.  He  ain't  got  no  mo'  religion  'n 
a  hog.  Sho.  What  he  know  'bout  religion, 
goin'  down  under  de  hill  to  pray,  an'  all  dat 
nonsense  ?  Couldn't  git  him  to  sing  a  song  or 
whistle  a  tune  now  on  no  account  whatsum- 
ever,  but  he  ain't  no  better  nigga  for  dat. 
Didn't  I  see  ?  He  shouted  mighty  loud  las' 
night,  but  he  shu'ked  his  wuk  dis  mawnin'  an' 
didn't  half  curry  his  mules ;  an'  religion  dat 
don't  make  a  nigga  take  good  car'  o'  po'  dumb 
creeters  like  mules  ain't  wuth  nuthin'  at  all,  no 
way  yo'  kin  fix  it.  When  dey  keeps  de  row  up 
jes'  a  little  better,  an'  don't  cover  up  no  weeds 
dey  ought  to  cut  down,  an'  takes  good  car'  o' 
mules,  an'  quits  stealin',  den  I  begins  to  'spect 
'em  o'  havin'  de  real  religion.  But  dey  can't 
fool  Phil  wid  none  o'  dere  sham  solemncholies." 

Phil  was  a  trifle  hard  and  uncharitable,  per- 
haps, in  his  judgments  upon  his  fellows  in  a 
matter  of  this  kind ;  but  there  was,  at  any  rate, 
no  hypocrisy  in  his  composition.  And  what  is 
more  singular  still,  I  was  never  able  to  discover 
any  trace  of  superstition  in  his  conduct.  He 
laughed   to    scorn   the  signs   and  omens   with 


My  Friend  Phil  249 

which  the  other  negroes  were  perpetually  en- 
couraged or  affrighted.  Friday  was  as  lucky 
a  day  as  any  in  his  calendar.  He  would  even 
make  his  fire  with  the  wood  of  a  lightning-riven 
tree,  and  stranger  still,  was  not  afraid,  as  all  the 
rest  were,  on  the  occasion  of  a  funeral,  to  bring 
away  the  shovels  used  in  the  church-yard,  with- 
out waiting  till  the  moon  and  stars  had  shone 
upon  them. 

"How  is  it,  Phil,"  I  once  asked  him,  "that 
you  don't  believe  in  any  of  the  luck  signs  ? " 

"Do  you  b'lieve  in  'em,  mastah?"  he  asked 
in  reply. 

"No,  of  course  not,  but  all  the  black  folks 
do,  except  you." 

"  Mastah,  ain't  you  foun'  out  yit  dat  niggas 
is  bawn  fools?  When  my  mastah  wants  de 
hogs  changed  from  one  piece  o'  woods  to 
annuder,  he  don't  go  to  makin'  blin'  signs  to 
me,  but  he  comes  an'  tells  me  what  he  wants ; 
an'  de  good  Lord  what  made  de  wuld,  he  ain't 
a-goin'  to  make  no  blin'  signs,  nuther.  He's 
done  tole  us  in  de  good  book  an'  in  all  de  wuld 
aroun'  us  what  to  do.  He's  put  sense  in  our 
heads  to  un'erstan'  what  he  means,  an'  he  ain't 
gwine  to  govern  de  univarse  wid  a  lot  o'  luck 
signs,  like  a  nigga  would  do  it.  'Sides,  Ise 
done  all  de  unlucky  things  heaps  o'  times,  an' 
ain't  never  had  no  bad  luck  yit." 

When    the   war   came,    Phil    was   a    stanch 


250  My  Friend  Phil 

Southerner  in  all  his  feeling,  and  firmly  held 
to  his  faith  in  the  success  of  his  side,  even  to 
the  end.  The  end  crushed  him  completely. 
When  his  master  explained  to  the  colored 
people  their  new  condition  of  freedom,  and  pro- 
posed to  engage  them  for  wages,  Phil  stoutly 
refused. 

"  De  odder  folks  may  do  as  dey  pleases,  mas- 
tah,  but  Phil's  gwine  to  be  your  nigga  jes'  as 
he  always  was.  I  ain't  gwine  to  be  free  nohow. 
I  ain't  got  no  free  nigga  blood  in  me.  I  never 
saw  no  free  nigga  what  wasn't  hungry ;  an'  I 
don't  know  no  free  nigga  what  won't  steal ; 
more'n  dat,  I  never  know'd  a  free  nigga  what 
wouldn't  sneak  up  on  birds  an'  shoot  'em  on  de 
gronri .  I  tell  you,  I  ain't  gwine  to  be  no  sich 
folks  as  dem.  Ise  your  nigga,  an'  Ise  gwine  to 
be  jes'  dat.  I'll  do  my  wuk,  an'  I  ain't  goin' 
to  take  no  wages,  an'  you'll  take  car'  o'  me  jes' 
as  you  always  did,  on'y  don't  never  call  me  no 
free  nigga.  Ise  a  slave,  I  is,  an'  Ise  got  de 
bes'  mastah  in  ole  Virginy,  an'  I  ain't  fool 
'nough  to  want  to  change  de  sitiwation." 

His  master  explained  to  him  the  necessity  of 
the  case,  and  showed  him  how  impossible  it  was, 
by  any  mutual  agreement,  to  alter  the  fact  of 
freedom,  or  to  escape  its  consequences. 

"  You  must  accept  wages,  Phil,  for  I  may  die 
or  go  into  bankruptcy,  and  you  may  grow  old 
or  get  ill ;  and  if  I  should  be  poor  or  dead,  then 


My  Friend  Phil  251 

there  would  be  nobody  to  take  care  of  you. 
You  must  work  for  wages  and  take  care  of  your 
money,  so  that  it  may  take  care  of  you." 

"  Mastah,  do  you  mean  to  tell  Phil  dat  de  law 
makes  me  a  free  nigga  whedder  or  no  ? " 

"Yes,  Phil." 

"  Den  stick  yo'  fingers  in  yo'  years,  mastah, 
'cause  Ise  gwine  to  swear.  Damn  de  law.  Dat's 
what  I  say  about  dat.  An'  now  Ise  jus'  gwine 
to  die,  an'  dat's  all  about  it." 

The  poor  fellow  walked  away  with  bowed 
head  and  tear-stained  face.  The  broad,  stalwart 
shoulders  were  bent  beneath  the  weight  of  re- 
sponsibility for  himself.  He  was  a  strong  man, 
physically,  but  the  merest  child  in  character, 
and  the  feeling  that  he  no  longer  had  any  one 
but  himself  to  lean  upon,  was  more  than  he 
could  bear.  The  light  of  cheerfulness  and  good 
humor  went  out  of  his  face.  The  joyousness  of 
his  nature  disappeared,  and  before  the  summer 
had  ripened  into  autumn,  poor  Phil  lay  down 
and  died  of  a  broken  heart. 


OLD  TIMES  IN  MIDDLE 
GEORGIA. 

BY 

RICHARD  MALCOLM  JOHNSTON. 
Cloth.     i2mo.     Price,  $1.50. 


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all  seasoned  by  the  strikingly  quaint  and  expressive 
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THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY, 

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YANKEE  SHIPS  AND  YANKEE 
SAILORS:    Talcs  of  J8J2. 


JAMES   BARNES, 

Author  of  "Naval  Engagements  of  the  War  of  18x2." 
"  A  Loyal  Traitor,"  "  For  King  and  Country,"  etc. 

With  Numerous  Illustrations  by  R.  F.  ZOGBAUM  and 
CARLTON  T.  CHAPMAN. 

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these  tales  will  appeal  irresistibly. 

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he  has  worked  up  each  tale  so  cleverly,  so  compactly,  so 
entertainingly,  that  they  may,  one  and  all,  be  taken  for 
models  of  their  kind."  —  Seaboard. 

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Wasp,  and  grand  '  Old  Ironsides.''  All  the  stories  are 
told  in  a  spirited  style  that  will  quicken  the  blood  and  the 
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ON  MANY  SEAS. 

THE  LIFE  AND  EXPLOITS  OF  A  YANKEE  SAILOR. 

BY 

FREDERICK  BENTON  WILLIAMS. 

EDITED    BY   HIS   FRIEND 

WILLIAM  STONE  BOOTH. 
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AMERICAN  HISTORY 

TOLD    BY    CONTEMPORARIES. 


ALBERT  BUSHNELL  HART, 

Harvard  University. 


The  Set  of  Four  Volumes,  $7.00. 
Each  Volume  sold  Separately,  Price  $2.00. 


VOL.     I.    Era  of  Colonization,  1493-1689. 

Published  i8qy. 

VOL.    II.    Building  of  the  Nation,  1689-1 783. 

Ready  shortly. 

VOL.  III.    National  Expansion,  1783-1844. 

In  Preparation. 

VOL.  IV.    Welding  of  the  Nation,  1845-1897. 

In  Preparation. 


Professor  T.  H.  Wood,  of  Worcester  Academy,  Worces- 
ter, Mass.,  says  of  Volume  I.  :  — 

"  The  plan  and  the  contents  are  alike  admirable.     The  set  will 
be  a  necessity  for  libraries  and  for  teachers  of  American  History." 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY, 
65  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 


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COLLECTION 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 

AT 

CHAPEL  HILL 

Wi  inner 
409 


